Kurt and Conrad dragged the warlock's unconscious form to the living room. She was a rather lithe woman which combined with her... missing bits, made it quite easy of a task. Mila followed, carrying the warlock's staff.

  They placed her body in an old armchair that was facing an 80's style TV, and tied her to it with the rope as tight as they could, focusing particularly in her hands in case she knew how to cast a Tighearnais. It must have been deeply uncomfortable, but given all the crap she had been doing to the town's folk this last month, Kurt wasn't particularly inclined to care.

  "Hey, Kurt." Called Conrad. "I get we can't just kill her but... why do you want to interrogate her?"

  Kurt looked at him for a second, puzzled. Then he remembered that he hadn't told his compannions about what he had found in the warlock's journal.

  "This warlock's coven is the one that captured The Aura of Red." Conrad's eyes bugged out for an instant, and his expression hardened. "I read it in her journal. Apparently something detected the natural energy emmanating from the relic and attacked their caravan. This one must have lost her foot in the struggle."

  "But then, why is she still here?" Asked Mila. "Why didn't her companion's take her with them?"

  "Mila." said Kurt softly. "What use could her coven have for a crippled warlock? People that go around violating the natural order for their own selfish gain don't exactly make for loyal friends."

  Mila looked at the warlock sadly. "Man, even for a coven... that's too cruel."

  "She's no saint herself." said Conrad. "That giant mosquito has killed like a dozen people on her behalf, for only God knows what reason."

  "I know, I know. It's just that..." She trailed off.

  "Empathy is never a bad thing." Reasured Kurt. "Even for people like... this woman. Plus, you're right, those warlocks are a bunch of cruel bastards. It's just that she's no different."

  Conrad hummed. "Being a victim doesn't mean that she's innocent."

  Mila nodded, and the group fell silent as they waited for the warlock to wake up.

  Abou half an hour passed, and she still hadn't awakened. Kurt began to wonder if he had tackled her too hard. Sorcerers-if she even was a true sorcerer,instead of a witch, someone without inborn magic that had acquired it through external means of any kind, like making a deal with a demon- weren't any tougher than regular humans, and Kurt had slammed her against a wall. She wasn't dead, but what if she was concused or something else? They needed her sound of mind if they were to interrogate her after all.

  Before the boy could voice his concerns to his companions, the woman began squirming in her seat, and mumbling as she awakened from her stupor. The woman opened her eyes, and saw the group of three staring back at her. Sucking a wimpering breath, the warlock tried to stand up, and endeavor cut short by the rope tying her to her seat.

  After a few seconds of struggling, the woman slumped in her seat and lowered her gaze in defeat. "Who are you?" She asked.

  Conrad scoffed."Just passersby, believe it or not. We where just making a stop in this town when our friend-" He gestured at Kurt. "-got into a bit of a fight with that mosquito of yours. He wounded it and, when it inevitably retreated back to its, or rather your, lair, he followed. I think you can imagine the rest."

  The captive remained silent for a few seconds after the explanation. Then, she let out a mirtless chuckle. "Fuck." She cussed. "A fucking coincidence? Why does every fucking bad thing have to happen to me? Just when I was so close..."

  Kurt stepped up to the woman, enraged by her self pitying. "Let me tell you something: Not 'every bad thing' happens to you. I met a woman, a good and innocent woman, that just a copuple hours ago got killed and drained to dust by a warlock's familiar." He pressed his face closer to hers, so she could take a good look at his borderline murderous expression. "That's a bad thing that hasn't happened to you, is it?!"

  If she was at all intimidated by his display of emotion, she was doing a great job at hiding it. Instead, she scoffed derisively. "No wonder my familiar attacked that 'good and innocent woman' then. It must have been following your scent."

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  Kurt stepped back, confused by her statement. "What are you talking about?"

  "My familiar tracks people based on their life force." she said with a shrug. "With how enormous and pure yours must be compared to a regular human's, he could have caught your scent from like fifty miles away. But, you see, my familiar is a predator: It attacks those weaker than itself, and it abhors anything resembling a challenge. When he actually got close enough to you, it must've realized it was out of its depth, and settled on the closest normal prey it saw." She smirked at Kurt, who looked more and more shocked with every word she said. "So thanks for guiding my darling to that... how was it? Oh, yeah! That good and innocent woman."

  "You..." Snarled Kurt through his cleenched teeth. If he was mad at her before, it had now evolved into pure, black hatred. In a single motion, the boy drew his sword out its sheath, and pressed it against the woman's neck. One slight thrust, one twirl of his wrist, and her carotid would be split.

  But he didn't. Instead, he kept his weapon pressed against her flesh for a few seconds. His sword arm felt weak, and he saw his hand tremble.

  "Ha!" Mocked the woman, seemingly emboldened by the display. "I fucking knew it: You can't kill me! Someone so young? Probably raised in one of those moralist cults that are the orders? You have never killed another human, have you? And despite how mad you are, you're still not willing to cross the line!" She beggan laughing aloud, mocking Kurt with her cackling.

  Kurt hated this woman. Loathed just as much as he did Melalo. But she was right: He had never killed another human being, only mindless constructs, undead and wild beasts. Even if she was a monster with a rotten soul, she was still human. And Kurt didn't dare to become a murderer.

  He felt his hand begin trembling even more, and a heat raise to his cheeks. Before he could do anything, or even think about what that 'anything' would even be, he felt someone placing a hand on his shoulder.

  Conrad gently drove Kurt away from the captive who, still in the middle of her laughing fit, didn't seem to notice the switch in the interrogators. Conrad looked down at the woman impassively for what couldn't have been more than a couple seconds. Then, without a word, he made his move.

  The move in question being a kick. A kick directed at the stump of her lost foot.

  The young man didn't so much kick it as he stompped on it. Driving all of his weight into the move. The woman's laugh quickly became a shriek. Her face was twisted in pain, and Kurt saw tears of pain pour from between her clenched eyelids. If Conrad saw all of this too, it did very little to invoke his sympathy. He stompped on her leg again.

  "Yeah, it hurts, doesn't it?" he said. "You lost this quite recently, didn't you? So I bet THIS-" He punctuated the word with another stomp. "- must feel like hell, right? With those fresh wounds reopening, and all those nerves still exposed." He raised his leg again.

  It was then that Kurt reacted. Re-sheathing his sword, the boy closed the distance between Conrad and him, and twined both his arms around his waist. "Conrad, that's enough!" He yelled, dragging the older swordsman away from the warlock. "Stop!"

  To Conrad's credit, he calmed down rather quickly, and didn't resist Kurt's attemps. The room fell in a silence than was only filled by the woman's whimpering and Conrad's heaving. Mila was the one to break it.

  "She's bleeding." said the girl. And indeed, when Kurt turned to look at their captive, he saw a small puddle of red blood pooling in the floor below her right knee, to which it was connected by a thin, constant riluvet of the substance. "We... should do something."

  "What about cauterizing it?" Asked Conrad. The woman began whimpering even more desperately, all of her bravado lost and forgotten. "You like that idea, bitch?! We could stick both your legs into that chimney of yours 'til we can't tell what stump came first!"

  "Conrad!" yelled Kurt. "That's fucking enough! This... isn't right! Even if she..."

  "If she what?" Retorted Conrad. "If she has killed over a dozen people? Even if she doesn't give a rat's ass about about the lives she's taken? She should be quite happy we're no killing her outright!"

  "Is that what you want to do then , killing her? And then what? You go on with your life like nothing, after murdering someone?"

  "And what option do we fucking have? Call the cops on her?" Conrad brought his hand to his ear, mimicking a phone. "Hello? We've captured this woman that's behind all the dissapeareances you've benn investigating. Where are the victims? Well, she feed her to her giant mosquito familiar, you see. Oh, what's that? You're sending a squad? To take me to the nuthouse? Well, thank you off...!"

  "Enough!" Interrupted Mila, who was tying a small vine she had conjured from the wooden floor around the warlock's knee as a makeshift tourniquet. "We can't take her to the police, that's clear. But killing her is not in the table either. So we gotta figure out what we do with her after we interrogate her!"

  "Interrogate me?" Asked weakely the woman, looking at Mila with fright. " About what? You already know what I've done."

  "But we don't know why." said Kurt. "You were part of a coven, and that coven got its hands on The Aura of Red. You were attacked by... something while transporting it, and that something took your leg, which is why your pals back at the Red Horn Cult ditched you, forcing you to stay in this town. We know all of that, but we don't know why you had that familiar of yours do what it did. Why not just lay low? What's the gain?"

  "I...needed it to grow." She answered. All her previous bravado seemed to have fizzled after Conrad's intervention. "So I could use it to kill... the thing that did this-" She raised her maimed leg. "-to me."

  Kurt frowned. "Is that it? Revenge? That's why you had so many people killed?"

  The warlock shrugged weakly."...Something like that."

  Conrad stepped up. The warlock winced and whimpered.

  "Wait." said Kurt, gesturing at Conrad to stop. "This isn't worth it. Torturing her accomplishes nothing."

  "Doesn't cost us nothing either." Retorted Conrad.

  "It costs us a lot." said Mila. "No torture or beating up." She turned to look at Kurt. "What do you think we should do with her?"

  Kurt didn't know what to answer to that. They couldn't kill her, and they couldn't hand her to the authorities either. What options did that leave them with? Making her pinky promise not to do it again? No, the minute they left her alone she would go right back to her dark magic bullshit the minute she was unsupervised, and they couldn't just take her with them. Not while they were esentially scouting through a whole country looking for...

  Oh, right.

  "Hey." Kurt called at the woman. "That coven of yours, do you know where they were taking the Aura? Like, where were they planning to-"

  "Phoenix, Arizona." she said bluntly. "Great spot for shamanistic stuff, apparently. Lots of natural magic, which is just perfect for a ritual involving one of the Auras."

  "...take it?"

  "Wait." Interjected Conrad. "That's it? No resistance or trying to mock us?"

  The warlock shrugged. "What would I do that for? Trying to protect the bastards that abandoned me in this godforsaken place? If I'm being honest, I almost wish you brats didn't have a no killing rule. That way I'd get the relief of knowing those sons of bitches are going to die."

  Conrad scoffed. "Well, you're not getting it, but thanks for the info. That's all we needed from you."

  The warlock looked uncertain. "So what now? Are you just gonna leave me here, tied up like this?"

  She was mocking them, Kurt knew. Subtly, phrasing it like a sincere question to avoid any more of Conrad's... corrections, but she was pushing boundaries once again now that the subject of their no killing rule had come up again.

  They had no proper way of dealing with her, and she knew it.