"Mila, it is not that easy." Conrad retorted, voice sharp. "We cannot just take the word of some psycho sorcerer as proof. We have to actually go there and make sure the Aura is where she said it was. That's the whole point of me being on this quest! If we turn back now, then everything we've been through, everything Kurt's been through, all of that will be for nothing!"

  Mila tensed when Kurt's name came into the conversation, and her expression grew hard and cold. "Don't you try pulling that on me! How can you even want to keep going? We all almost died last night, and you were the first one! Had Ruth turned out to be actually evil, Kurt would be dead, I would have spent the rest of my life in that forest as a prisoner, and you would have been left abandoned in some random town with freaking permanent injuries! This entire thing has gotten way too big for us. We should take our meager gains and go back, because the next bump on the road might be the one that kills us."

  Conrad grimmaced, but didn't argue back. He couldn't. There was no rebutting or denying what Mila had said. So, in order to try and keep his argument up, he took an alternative choice.

  He turned to Kurt.

  "And what do you think, man?" He asked.

  "Leave him alone." Mila said. "He just got a freaking panic attack. He's..."

  "He's a third of this quest party." He cut in. "And the one that's done most of the heavy lifting. It's just natural that he would be the tiebreaker." He turned back to Kurt. "So, dude, what do you think? You wanna take this to the end? Or do you want to go back? You decide. We'll go with what you say, promise."

  "I..." Kurt began to speak, before stopping himself. What did he want to do? "I don't know. I mean, we were going to Phoenix, right? That's the whole reason we stole a car last night, and all of us agreed on it."

  "That was last night, Kurt." said Mila. "We... were very tired, and Conrad had just bounced back from a coma. We were not on our right minds, even if we felt we were. I mean, isn't the fact that we agreed to steal a freaking car prove enough?"

  "I... think so, yeah." he said, sweeping a hand across his hair. He fell silent for a moment, his gaze going back and forth from Mila to Conrad. "I want to keep going. I... don't want to remember all the shit we've been through to then think 'And we didn't even properly complete the quest.', and I don't wanna give up bacause I'm scared of what we might have to face next, like I'm a scared child that doesn't even dare to look beneath his bed in case there's a monster. I don't think I would be able to bear that kind of shame, to be honest."

  "So... is it a go, then?" Asked Conrad carefuly.

  Kurt took a deep, long breath, throwing his head back while doing so, and then he threw it back down with a sigh. "I don't know, man." He confessed. "I don't want to give up, but Mila is rigth. What if the next thing we face ends up doing us in? I already failed once. No, in fact, I failed twice last night."

  "Kurt." Called Mila. "What do you even mean now? You did not..."

  "I did." He interrupted her. "I failed to defeat Ruth, as you said. Hadn't she had a soft spot for you, I would be a goner now. And this whole thing just started because I failed to properly deal with that sorcerer."

  "Deal with her?" Asked Conrad. "What... do you mean by that, exactly?"

  "You know what I mean." Kurt said tiredly. "I ended up doing it either way, right? If I hadn't chickened out and tried to have the Solomonic Order do what I ended up doing, then nothing of this would have happened. Things went to shit because I was weak. And I'm just as weak now as I was yesterday."

  "And how come that doen't apply to us?" said Mila, voice shaky. "You say you failed there? Then what about me? I was the one that gave her the vine she used as a foci. If I hadn't tried to be all charitative to a serial killer, then nothing of this would have happened. So how come it is your fault and not mine?"

  Kurt turned to her. "Mila, we talked about..."

  "Then what about me?" Called Conrad. "It's because of me that Mila had to put a tourniquet on that bitch, and all because I could not control myself. And you know why I was so mad at her that I started to beat her up Jack Bauer style?"

  Kurt shrugged softly. "I mean, she was an unrepentant serial killer."

  "Yeah, I know." said Conrad. "And don't get me wrong, that was the vastly mayor part of why I hated that bitch so much. But I was talking about what tipped me over specifically."

  "And that would be?" Kurt asked, raising an eyebrow.

  "That she had the gall to mock you, of all people." Conrad said as he aproached Kurt, kneeling down so their eyes would be at the same level. "That woman, a pathetic excuse of a human who was willing to kill over a dozen innocents just for the faint possibility of getting her leg back, and then crack jokes about it, was laughing at you, a guy that managed to become the best warrior in the order before any supernatural gifts came into the equation, just because you were too kind to kill her outright. That's what pissed me off beyond control." He lowered his gaze to the floor for a moment, looking conflicted, before turning it back up. "Hey, do you remember our last spar?"

  "Excuse me?" Asked Kurt, confused at the umprompted question.

  "The spar we had before we received this quest, remember? The one where I went... way overboard?"

  "Oh, yeah. That one..." said Kurt, his hand going reflexively to his chin. "What about it?"

  "You know why I went so far just to win?"

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Kurt shrugged. "Because you did not want to lose to me? I mean, this was back when we kinda hated each other."

  "Well, yeah." Agreed Conrad, a slightly embarrased smile on his lips. "But there was a more specific reason to it; both to why I went so far to win against you and... well, to why I kinda hated you."

  His semblance turned serious abruptly, and a wave of doubt seemed to wash over him. It took him some solid 20 seconds to continue.

  "My parents are sorcerers of the Solomonic Order." he said suddenly. His face was turned towards the ceiling, as if he could not bear to look at anyone while covering the subject at hand. "My father is a wind-specialized evocationist from England, and my mother a very competent necromancer and alchemist from Pakistan. They met, fell in love, all of that noise. Then, they got married, and had a whoole lot of children together. Six, to be specific. All of them talented sorcerers and future members of the order, prospect protectors of mankind."

  He let out a mitless laugh, more an exhalation than anything else, and turned to look at them. His eyes looked pained, and the sides of his mouth were twisted in a strange gesture.

  "All six but me. When two sorcerers have children together, then those children are almost asured to be sorcerers too. Almost being the operative word, like with anything genetic, thre's always the chance for something to go wrong." His lips curled in a smile that didn't reach his eyes, and he pointed at himself with two thumbs. "Just like me."

  Kurt looked at Conrad, completely stunned. Then, his mind went to what he knew about Conrad's past, about him being a drifter with no known associates before he joined the order.

  Finally, he managed to formulate the question.

  "What did they do?" He asked cautiously. "Your... your parents, I mean. What did they do when they found out?"

  Conrad looked at him un puzzlement for a moment. And then something seemed to click on his brain, because his eyebrows shot up and his eyes damn near bugged out in the most scandalized face Kurt had ever seen.

  "Nononono!" He stammered, shaking his head. "They did not abandon me or anything. They... well; when they figured out what was wrong with me they just...cooled."

  "Cooled?" Repeated Mila. "Uhm...care to elaborate? Please?"

  Conrad sighed tiredly, but he complied with the request. "They stopped acting like my parents, that's what I mean. They stopped going out of their way to talk with me, always looke duncomfortable when they did so... that kind of thing. It went beyond just that though; because I could not do sorcery, and they did very much not want me practicing witchcraft or anything like it, I was left in the care of one tutor or the other. While my brothers and sisters learned how to conjure a whirlind from dad or how to mix life force and aether to make necrotic energy with mom, I was left in my own room, learning geography or math that were a couple of grades above mine. I don't know, guess they thought that, if I cold not use magic, atleast I could get extra smart to make up for it, or something." A quick look of anger flashed acroos his fcae. "I was raised separately, so to speak, and in time, I found out that I barely had anything in common with my own siblings. And so, they too, became strangers."

  He took another break, this one longer than the last, and Kurt began doubting that he would continue on his own. So, he found himself asking the question that was burning through his mind.

  "And what happned when your Aura awakened?"

  "Oh! Then everything went back to what it was!" Exclaimed Conrad suddenly, a fake cheer on his voice. "All those years of ostracism? The chasm that existed between my parents and i, and the one with my siblings?" He made a sweeping motion with his hand, so fast and wide that it looked more like a back handed slap than anything. "Poof! Gone! I was suddenly part of the family again! Do you know what my father did when he saw me wreathed in those dark blue lightnings, and when he saw how fast I could move in that state?"

  All throughout his speech, his tone and face had been losing all of their cheer, revealing the sheer rage that had been lurking beneath.

  "He hugged me! That son of a bitch caught me in his arms, the biggest smile you could picture on his face, and told me how proud he was of me! And I..." He threw his face to his hands, groaning. "I was happy. I was finally part of the family again, after all! How could I possibly not be happy?" He raised his head once again, face devoid of all emotion. "It didn't last long though, because a voice in the back of my head, the part of me that saw my parents for what they truly were asked me one simple question. A question that my old, naive self did not know how to answer: So, now that I have magic of my own, I'm part of the family again'? Once I truly realized the sheer hypocrisy of it all, I was not happy anymore. My father's proud smile, my mother's embrace..." An ugly sneer crossed his face. "They were disgusting to me now, and that led me to yet another realization: 'I am just as lonely as I was before. I got nothing out of this'. And it was that last revelation, alongside how powerful I felt now that I wasn't a fucking muggle, that gave me the resolution to do what I should have done a long time before."

  "You ran way from your home." said Mila.

  Conrad nodded, smiling softly. "That I did, yeah. And after that, well..." He shrugged. "I did a bit of everything, really: Master the use of my Aura, pick up the sword, hunting monsters and warlocks and such for a living... Until I my path crossed with Mr. Anderson's, and I joined the order."

  Kurt blinked twice, trying to set his head after the avalanche of information Conrad had just dumped on Mila and him. Before he knew it, a question escaped his lips. "Why are you telling us this?" And then, realizing just how rude he had sounded, he added. "I mean, I'm sorry you went through that, I really am but... why are you sharing it now of all times?"

  "You said you were weak." said Conrad simply. "You told us that you wanted to keep going, but that you don't feel strong enough to actually do so. Well, I think you are strong, very strong indeed." Something like shame or guilt tinted his eyes. "Much stronger than me, at least."

  "What?" Asked Kurt.

  "You know why I hated you, Kurt?" Asked Conrad, ignoring Kurt's own question. "Why I could not stand you before this whole quest? It's because every time I looked at you, every time I remembered that you had no magical talent of your own, and every time I remembered that you were just as strong as me despite that and being so much younger than me i, well... felt so utterly pathetic that I wanted to die. You, too, were raised in a place where everyone but you had something magical about them, just like I did but, unlike me, you didn't even have the meager respite of being healthy. And none of that stopped you from claiming your place in that world of monsters and magic. You trained, mastered the sword on your lonesome, and went on every quest they would let you in as nothing but a regular human and, eventually,as if you were being recognized by something greater by your effort, you found a way to raise to that level without needing anything but your own human, magicless body. And then you mastered that too, and rose to even greter heights on nothing but sheer will and effort, until you reached the level I needed a random busted blessing to attain." Conrad frowned, looking very sad all of a sudden. "And, unlike myself, you still have a long road ahead, especially now that you have a magic talent on top of everything else, but, even before that, I knew something about you and me that you did not: You were going to surpass me, Kurt. Maybe in a year or a few, but it was going to happen eventually. So, when we sparred, and I noticed that we were not evenly matched anymore? That you had the slightest advantage over me? I despaired. I mentally begged to any god that was listening to please give just a little more time as your equal. And when that prayer wasn't answered?" He patted his leg. "I took more power out of my unearned blessing than my body could take, and managed to score a tie at the cost of damn near crippling myself."

  "You... were jealous me." Kurt found himself saying, his own words sounding alien on his mouth. Conrad envied him, or at least he had. The same guy that Kurt felt he had to train himself to the bone just to match, that he had only managed to best after receiving a boost to his power from some weird magic ability he still didn't fully understand, and who even then had managed to knock him out on their duel. The guy who actually acted with the digity beffiting of a hero an actual hero, so unlike Kurt himself with his rage and pride and hoarding of his knowledge. "I... was jealous of you, too."

  Conrad recoiled slightly, as if Kurt's words had carried some measure of weight with them. Then, he thre his head back, and started laughing uproariously. "Man! We... we are both kinda stupid, aren't we? Whythe hell does it take us a brush with death to talk about our freaking feelings?"

  "Hell if I know, man." said Kurt with a laugh, before pointing at Mila. "I mean, look at the kind of person it took to befriend me! She's had to put the emotional intelligence for the both of us for like eight years now!"

  A soft hand took hold of his own. "For the record, I would not exchange those eight years for a single thing."

  "Neither would i, Mila." he said, gently squeezing her hand. It came to his mind the realization of his own feelings he had had just the night prior, about just how much he loved the girl besides him, and how much of that love was romantic in nature, and found himself rather surprised at how little he was feeling now in the way of shame. "Not for a single thing in the whole world."

  "Hey, lovebirds!" Called Conrad, making both Kurt and Mila to turn their heads towards him. "I'm glad your courtship is going well, but I just gave one hell of a speech about how pathetic I feel when compared to a freaking fifteen years old, and I'd like to get something out of it so, are we going to Phoenix, Kurt? Or do I have to debase myself even further to make you feel strong enough?"

  Kurt pondered for a moment. Then, a slight smile formed on his lips, and he stood up from the bed, still holding Mila's hand.

  "Guys," he said. "It's time we get moving. We have a quest to complete."

  As soon as those words came out of his mouth though, something else-and rather important- ocurred to him, and he turned to Mila. "Uhm, if you are willing to go, I mean."

  The girl gave him a deadpan look, and let out an exagerated sigh, throwing her free hand above head in a flourish. "Sure, I guess. It ain't like I can trust you two to go on alone or something. I mean..." Her lips twisted in a mischiveous smile. "...who's gonna snuggle with you when you feel down? Conrad?"

  Kurt turned toward the man in question. Then, he turned back to the girl and said. "Thank you for your service."