Running away from the hospital staff had been simple enough even without using Pneuma, mainly because they were more centered on assisting his two gravely injuried companions than on trying to apprehend some random kid.

  Sneaking back into the hospital had been slightly more complicated, if only because the front door wasn't an option after the staff had seen him drop two electrocuted teenagers and run away. He laid low for about an hour before he dared approach the building again, using that time to go back to the train and take all of the group's stuff from their wagon, because he felt that, no matter what happened that night, they would not be boarding that train again. Once he had done that, and made his way back to the hospital, he scanned the side of the building until he found what he was looking for: A window that was both open and leading to an unlit room.

  Climbing his way up to said window, which was in the building's second floor, had been relatively easy thanks to his Od reinforcement. The room it led him to was luckily unoccupied, which made it easy for him to wait inside until he deemed it safe to go into the hall.

  The final step of his plan, and the one he thought would be the trickiest to accomplish, finding where Conrad and Mila where, had turned out to also be quite easy. Looking back, it was rather obvious that someone with wounds like Conrad's being dropped in front of the building would be something people would talk about, especially in a small town hospital like the one they were in. All Kurt had to do was eavesdrop a couple of nurses talking about it.

  "I swear I've never seen wounds like the ones on that kid."

  "Mmh? What kid?"

  "You didn't hear about it? They found two teens just... dropped outside the building, one boy and one girl. The girl only had some mild burns, but the boy..."

  "That bad?"

  "He didn't have skin on his back. You could see the muscle beneath, and he was so burnt that it barely bled. He's in surgery right now."

  "Jesus Christ. And the girl?"

  "She was stable, just unconscious. They put her in room 204"

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  "Mila." Called Kurt as he entered the room. "Are you here?"

  Before he could begin questioning if he had gotten the wrong room, Mila's hospital-gown-clad form appeared before him. She had some small bandages covering her arms, but apart from that she looked fine. Of course, the wide smile she was giving him definitely helped sell that idea.

  Without saying anything, she walked up to him and hugged him with all her might, nuzzling against his chest. He hugged her back.

  "What the heck took you so friggin' long?" she said, still hugging him.

  "I didn't want to risk it, coming in right after dropping you. " He answered. "Plus, you guys had to receive treatment either way, so it wouldn't have made much sense for me to try and visit you right away."

  "This..." she said, raising her bandage-clad arm in front of him. "Is all the treatment I received. It only took like fifteen minutes."

  "That's good." he said, relieved. "That means you only had minor injuries. I heard Conrad's in surgery right now."

  Mila sighed, and broke their hug. "Yeah, I... heard the doctors talk about it when they were treating me. I was plying dead, like you said, so I guess they didn't think anything about discussing it in front of me. Can we... sit before we talk about it?"

  Kurt nodded and followed Mila to the only bed in the room, where they both sat. They remained silent for a minute, neither really knowing how to adress the absolute disaster that had transpired less than two hours ago.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  "Ho. Ly. Shit." Gasped Kurt, pressing both hands against his face.

  "Yeah." Agreed Mila, placing a hand on Kurt's back. "It's... rough."

  "It's a lot more than rough, it's a freaking disaster, I... just don't know what we're supposed to do now." He turned to look at Mila. "What did the doctors say? About Conrad, I mean."

  "You... probably can imagine already." She answered, her tone weary. "They talked about how extensive his wounds were, speculated on what could have caused the, and... talked about the nerve damage."

  Kurt felt his blood run cold. "How bad did they say it was?" He asked, his voice so small and weak he could barely recognize it. "Is he...?"

  "He's not paralized." Reasured Mila. "They said that the spine was surprisingly intact for an electric wound of that magnitude." She turned to look at him and shruged. "I guess her magical lightning was more difused than it should be, given the position she was in when she cast it."

  "That's probably true." Agreed the boy. "What nerve damage does he have then?"

  "Periferal stuff mostly. They said that with his skin and muscle burnt that badly, he probably will never regain sensitivity on his back." She sighed, and placed her head against his shoulder. "Kurt... what do we do now?"

  He didn't know what to answer to that. Conrad was the only mean they had of figuring out where the Aura was in specific. What were they supposed to do without him, look at every place in Phoenix?

  Conrad... what were they going to do about him? Wounds like that would take months, or perhaps even years, to recover from, and he still would have to deal with permanent after effects even then. Even trying to bring his sister, Abbigail, wouldn't help them much. Her powers of healing weren't omnipotent. She could heal lacerated skin or broken bone just fine, but stuff that the body wasn't designed to heal from, like nerve damage? Her powers simply couldn't help with that, and it wasn't like they had alternatives. Healing magic was so rare that even an artifact capable of stopping a nosebleed was something worth killing for. Something capable of healing wounds like Conrad's in time for them to continue their quest wasn't something they had acces to.

  "I don't know." He admitted. "The quest is toast, that much is clear, so I guess the best we can do is calling Mr. Anderson and hearing whatever advice he has."

  He felt Mila's head move in what he thought was a nod. "Not even calling Abby would help, right?"

  "No, this is beyond even her. Best thing we can do is wait until Conrad's stable and... I honestly don't know. Perhaps trying to get him out of here before anyone starts asking you questions."

  "I see." said Mila. "You know, I've been thinking about something"

  "About what?" He asked.

  "When we were... interrogating that woman and you asked about why she was preying on the townsfolk, she... gave quite a cryptic answer, didn't she?"

  Kurt raised an eyebrow. "Did she? I remember her saying she wanted her familiar to grow, so that she could use it to kill what took her leg. Pretty straightforward evil warlock motivation: Revenge."

  "Yeah, but..." She sat straight once again, and looked Kurt in the eye. "Did she ever actually say she wanted revenge? Think about it. The one to bring up revenge as a motivation was you, not her, and her response was to say..."

  "...'Something like it'" Completed Kurt, beginning to understand what Mila was trying to communicate. "You think that she might have wanted to kill what attacked her for other reason, don't you?"

  "Exactly." She confirmed. "And what reason could this be? What could she possibly want so badly that she would risk blowing her cover and risking her life over? What could she take from that creature that was so precious?"

  Kurt pondered on this for a few seconds before the answer came to him. "Something that could undo the wound she had received. A healing magic potent enough to regrow or reattach an entire limb."

  "Or potent enough to instantly cure extensive, third-degree burns." She added.

  "In her journal," said Kurt, dubitative. "The warlock said that the creature that took her foot was attracted by the Aura her coven was carrying with them. Given that the Auras are esentially masses of Primeval magic..."

  "...It's very likely that the creature that attacked her was also aligned to nature in some form." She finished.

  They both understood the possibility this theory raised: Magic capable of healing the physical body was extremely rare, and part of the reason for this was that, with few exceptions, there were only two types of magical power capable of achieving it: Sacred magic coming from either a god or the God, like the one Abby had been blessed with since birth, or Primeval magic.

  So, if a powerful enough creature, that also happened to be suffused with the power of nature, was roaming somewhere in the area...

  With a hurry that surprised even him, Kurt reached for his inventory, and took from it the warlock's journal.

  "I didn't get to read much of its contents." He told Mila as he flipped through the book's pages. Kurt saw, even rushing through it as he was, that the book was filled with all kinds of contents. The warlock had probably used it for pretty much every kind of recording she had wanted to make, not just as a journal. As he was flipping through the pages, Kurt saw everything ranging from walls of text he didn't bother reading past a few words, to what seemed to be detailed drawings of atoms and electric fields. "She probably used this for everything. So if she had a plan so important..."

  "... It's gotta be there." she said. "Do you see something?"

  Kurt kept flipping through the pages, reading only the starting and finishing sentences of each one. "Give me a minute, please. There's a lot of stuff in here, and most of it isn't in a chronological order, like she just began wrote wherever struck her fancy at any given moment" Another page. Nothing. "This is a freaking mess, honestly." Another page. Nothing again. "How the hell did she ever find anything in-?" Another page.

  "Got it." Kurt said with a smile. He placed the notebook on his lap, so Mila see its contents too: A depiction of the town and the forest surrounding it, with a red X marking a point between the trees, and some short text on the margins. "She marked the place where she thought the beast's lair is." He hopped off the bed. "I'll go get check it."

  "You will go?" Asked Mila, getting of the bed too. "Alone?"

  Kurt nodded.

  Mila shook her head. "No way! It's the middle of the night, you don't even know what you'll be fighting and it's in the middle of the forest, which is my turf. Im coming with you."

  "In that state?" Asked Kurt, gesturing at the girl's bandage-clad arms. "You almost died once tonight. I'm not risking it."

  Mila didn't answer. Instead, she brought her right arm upwards, and began tearing the bandages covering it apart with her bare teeth. Once they were loose enough she yanked them with her free hand, revealing the slightly rosy skin beneath.

  "These-" she said, showing him her arm."-are the worst wounds I have, and they're not even first degree burns. It's thanks to Conrad shielding me with his body that I'm fine, so I am not just sitting here while you risk your life to save him." She looked him in the eye. "We are both going retrieve that healing magic, and I'll just follow you if you try to go alone. So, how do you wanna do this?"