As he and Mila, who had discarded her hospital robes and was now wearing a white summer dress, made their way through the dark forest, he could only think about how much of a coward that warlock had been.

  Her house had been placed at the east end of the town, right on the border with the forest. Meanwhile, the creature's lair was deep into a section of the forest west to the town, so, for all her claims of wanting to kill the beast, and all the atrocities she had commited trying to fulfill this plan, she was still scared enough of it to put an entire population in between them, as a buffer.

  Perhaps it was a reasonable reaction, to try and put some kind of barrier between oneself and a creature that had taken their leg, and he probably would have been more understanding of this measure hadn't it been taken by what esentially amounts to a magical serial killer, but alas, this was how things were.

  "Mila." He called. They were walking side by side, so close that their shoulders almost touched, each one pointing a flashlight in front of them. It had been a little while since they had reached the creature's territory, or at least the section the warlock had marked as its territory, and they had still found nothing. "Can you feel anything special about this place? Like, is Primeval magic thicker or more violent here?"

  "Hmmm... Not really." she said, shaking her head softly. "There is a lot of natural magic around us, but that's pretty normal for a forest." She turned to look at him. "Can't you feel it too? I mean, you do have magical senses now, don't you?"

  "I do." Confirmed Kurt. "But they don't work with this type of magic. There's... something about Primeval magic that's fundamentally different from aether, which is the type of magic I can sense. In fact, I'd say Primeval magic has more in common with Od than anything else."

  "And you can't feel Od either?"

  "Not other people's." he said with a shrug. "I can feel my own just fine, but I could already do that before. Primeval magic is something like the planet's life force, its Od, so I can't really feel it like you can."

  "It's not like I'm feeling much now." Mila shrugged. "Nature here feels quite normal, not like there's a powerful beast or violent spirit lurking around."

  "We should keep looking, there's definitely something here. I mean, something had to have taken that warlock's leg, right?"

  "Right..." Softly agreed Mila. "Uhm, speaking of that warlock, how are you feeling?"

  "How am I feeling?" Repeated Kurt, confused.

  Mila pointed her flashlight at Kurt's legs. The lower front part of his pants was dark with the now brown blood of the warlock. "About that, I mean. This... is the first time you kill another person, right?" Kurt nodded. "Are you feeling okay?"

  Was he feeling okay? He really hadn't stopped to think about it, what with all that had happened and how fast it had happened. He had made of not killing another people something of a rule, not a written rule or something he had to tell himself not to do, but a rule nonetheless. And he had broken that rule, he had killed someone. It had been self defense, that much was clear, with her throwing lightning around and all, but he still had stabbed right through her throat with a sword. He had looked her in the eye while she was dying by his own hand. Kurt had heard somewhere that killing someone was more traumatic the closer you physically were to them when commiting the deed, because the closer you were to them, the harder it was to deny the fact that they were humans just like yourself. That's why snipers had, for the most part, less issues with PTSD and such than soldiers that had to kill from up close. They had killed, and they knew that, but they hadn't seen the fear on their victims eyes, their pain, or their struggle to keep living.

  Kurt had seen all that in the that woman. He had killed her from about as close as possible, short of doing it with his bare hands, and he didn't really know how to feel about it.

  "It's complicated." He finally answered. "I don't think I'm fine with it or anything, like I don't care I did what I did. But, honestly? I'm not feeling guilty about it or anything. I mean, you feel guilty when you make a bad choice, right? Like stealing something you might not really need or something like that. I don't think I had much of a choice there, it was kill her or get killed by her."

  He felt Mila place her hand softly on his shoulder. "I know that, and I understand perfectly that you had to do... that if you wanted to live. I'm not trying to make you feel a guilt you shouldn't have to bear, I just wanted to make sure you were..." She trailed off.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  "Fine?" Offered Kurt. Mila nodded. "I don't exactly know how I am yet. Everything's still very fresh, plus we have a mission to do, which is keeping my mind on something else. Maybe, in a couple of days, I'll come back to think about all this an bawl like a baby or something. But right now? I'm just thinking about retrieving whatever that thing has that can save Conrad."

  "Okay. But if you feel like 'bawling like a baby' when this is over, you can talk to us about it, ok? Don't do like when you fought that demon, please."

  "I won't, I promise." he said. "I'm just worried about something else."

  "About what?"

  "What if whatever attacked that warlock doesn't have something that can heal Conrad? I mean, healing magic is rare as hell, particularly one as potent as the one we need, so, what if that warlock was wrong? What if she was just... deluding herself into thinking she could regain her leg if she killed that creature, and we are know inheriting that same delusion? That is, of course, if those were her intentions, it's not exactly like we can ask her now."

  Mila pondered for a moment before answering. "I mean, does it make a difference? Being out here or being in that hospital, at least here we have a chance of saving Conrad."

  " The difference is that, in the hospital, we wouldn't be risking our lives." He looked at Mila's arm, her exposed skin still showing slight burns all over. "You wouldn't be risking your life a second time this night."

  "If we weren't okay with risking our lifes, we wouldn't have come here in the first place." She retorted. "I understand that you worry, but Conrad knew what he was signing up for when he accepted the quest, and so did I. We both could have said no to this entire quest, but we didn't, and neither did you. Risking our lives to keep some warlocks from perverting the natural order, or risking our lives in this forest to try and save Conrad, that's the difference I'm asking about."

  "I... guess there's no difference." He answered. "It's just that I don't wanna think everything's going smoothly and then have something blow on our faces because we lowered our guards."

  Mila looked down, and her semblance took a somber tone. "Yeah, you're right. I don't wanna screw up again."

  "What?" He asked, turning to look at her. "What are you talking about?"

  She looked at him."Sorcerers can't use their magic without something to channel it through, right? At least not the really powerful stuff." Kurt nodded. "That woman... she used the vine I grew to throw that attack at us, didn't she? The attack came from her right knee, which was where I tied it."

  Oh, yeah. He had forgotten about that. She really thought about a lot of stuff when they had been separated.

  "That's... true." he said, not seing the point in lying. "She did use it as a foci. But you can't really think that it was your fault, right?" She remained silent. "Mila, you were just trying to keep that woman froom bleeding out..."

  "And look what it got us." She interrupted sourly. "Because I wanted to be nice to that... that..."

  "Warlock?" Offered Kurt.

  "That bitch!" She exclaimed, making Kurt wince back a little. Hearing Mila insult someone, anyone, was quite the shocking sight. "I tried to help her, to show some compassion to her psycopathic ass, and what did that net us? Conrad getting maimed, and you being forced to kill someone! I should have just let that bitch bleed out, then none of this would be happening."

  Kurt remained silent as she talked, and remained that way once she was done.

  "Don't you..." said Mila, softly, sounding vulnerable. She turned to look at him once again, and Kurt saw that her eyes were watery. "Don't you have anything to say?"

  "Like what?" He asked. "Something like 'Empathy is never wrong'? Or like 'We have to act that way because we're heroes'?" Mila nodded, obviously wanting an answer like that. "I could tell you that. But I respect you to much to feed you bullshit I don't believe in just to make you feel better."

  Mila blinked. "Excuse me?"

  Kurt sighed. "Mila... I wouldn't have done what you did for that woman. I hated her, and I'm only using the past tense because she's dead. I could barely bring myself to separate Conrad from her, I sure as hell wasn't thinking about giving her first aid afterwards. You were, because that's the kind of person you are: Kind, empathetic, warm... that's what makes you, well, you."

  "Well, me being me..."

  "Gave that woman the chance to do her lightning show, I know. But what about it?" He placed a hand on her shoulder, careful not to press any of her wounds. "You did what you believed was right. You tried to show compassion to a monster while I could just think about how to kill her without getting our hands dirty, and I know that, given a second chance, you would probably do the same, because you, Mila, can't see someone suffer and not try to help them. You feel like shit now?" She nodded. "Well, I'm sorry, but you are more than smart enough to know that, most of the time, being good sucks. And you know what? I know, not think, know that, even with this experience on your back,you are not going to stop being the compassionate, awesome girl that I know ."

  He brought an arm around her shoulder, pressing her softly against his chest. "You went through the whole process of becoming a fae. Compared to that, this whole night is nothing."

  He felt Mila leaning on him, and bringing her arm around his waist. "Thanks."

  "No need to thank me." He replied. "Just saying the truth."

  They stayed like that for a moment, before Mila broke the hug.

  "Well!" She exclaimed, sounding a lot more like her usual self. "Now that we have the heavy stuff out of the way, it's time to actually find what we came looking for!"

  "I take it that you have an idea?" He asked, smirking.

  "Yup!" she said, making her way to the nearest tree. "My own basic senses can't tell us where that thing is, right?"

  "Right."

  "So I just have to ask 'someone' else." She placed both hands on the tree's trunk, which began pulsating with green energy. "If that thing has been here long enough, and his attuned to Primeval magic, then it's just natural I can't feel them, because they wouldn't stick out more than the trees or grass. So, if they are so ingrained in the system that's the forest that we can't discern it from outside, we must simply rattle the system and analyze it from within."

  Kurt smiled, understanding her point. "And what better way to do that than awakening one of the 'components' of that system?"

  "Exactly!" She chirped. The glow of Primeval magic began emanating from the tree, brighter and brighter.

  Brighter, in fact, than any other time Kurt had seen Mila's Spirit Communion.

  "Mila!" He called, shielding his eyes from the now blinding light with one hand. "Is everything alright?! Why is it glowing so much?"

  Mila groaned in effort. "It's... too much energy!" Her hands darted back, away from the trunk, and she tumbled back to Kurt's side.

  The tree kept building up energy.

  "There's... something wrong." she said, wheezing. "There's something pumping energy into that tree."

  The buildup finally stopped, and the tree exploded in a blast of emerald energy.