"Robin. Hey! Robin!" 

Robin felt someone aggressively shake his shoulder, causing the dull pain in his shoulder radiate across his body as he began to gain consciousness.

"Hurry, Bert! Did you heal him yet?"

"I'm trying, Margo."

Robin blinked up at the two sorcerers who were kneeling over him. Their outlines appearing as nothing more than dark shadows against the dull light as his eyes adjusted to his surroundings. 

The dark trees of the strange forest,  where Otto had transported him, loomed above their heads. However, the light that streamed through the branches had dimmed, making Robin wonder how much time had passed between then and now. The pounding in Robin's head and ringing in his ears began quickly drowning out the sounds of his surroundings.

A worried look passed between Bert and Margo.

Robin groaned as he rolled onto his side; pain radiating across his body.

"Oh—Robin! Oh, thank the heavens. He's alive," Margo laughed nervously, letting out a sigh of relief "That was some impressive work, Bert."

"Thanks, I've been trying to figure out Robins's healing magic after he fixed th-'

"What—" Robin started to get up, but his surroundings began shifting around him, and his head pounded against his skull. The two sorcerer's quickly reached out to steady him.

"Wait, Robin, don't sit up too quickly. You lost a lot of blood," Margo gently instructed, resting a hand on his shoulder. "Where is your brother?"

"What?" Robin asked wearily. "Otto was just with me."

"Okay..." Margo glanced at Bert. "But what happened before the Nanahounds attacked?"

"The... Nanahounds?"

"Yes, we found you unconscious and being attacked by Nanahounds," Margo explained, her voice tight with urgency. "Which is very strange, Nanahounds don't usually travel in groups like that. We think they might have been controlled or lured here... Bert sensed a rookie magic similar to his own," She rambled, before shaking her head, "But that's besides the point, we managed to scare them off, but you still got hurt pretty bad."

"H-How did you know where I was?"

"Well, we  planted some spider spies in Holly's house in case of the heart thief, way before you ever arrived. We started watching more closely after Holly's duel, and when we saw Otto take you through the portal, we grew suspicious... Otto killed the fly on your shoulder before we sent to follow you." Margo explained with an irritated sigh. "Luckily, there are plenty of bugs in this area, so we eventually found where you were, but this is far from Sunshine Aches, so it took us a while to find your exact location." Margo added, her eyes filled with pity as she looked at Robins bloodied clothes.

Robin felt her gaze fall onto his torn shirt, and Robin instinctively reached for where his necklace once sat around his neck, but it was gone. Only blood coated his hands as he pulled them from his chest.

"I don't know where Otto is, but he has my necklace."

Margo froze. A worried look crossed her face.

"That's...where your necklace is?"

"Yes."

"You gave it to him?" she asked sternly.

Robin paused, suddenly frightened the sorceress's wrath.

"I—y-yes."

Margo clenched her teeth and screamed, shaking her head as she did so. She quickly stood up and yelled again into the trees. Scaring some birds into to the sky. Shaking out her hands in frustration, she before she took a deep breath and sat back down next to him.

"I want to be mad," she grumbled, after a moment of thinking.  "but with how little I trust your brother, and seeing the state of you now...that might have been the smartest move. Otto would have taken it whether you gave it to him or not. Those Nanahounds were always a part of his plan."

"What plan—"

"We need to find Holly, fast," Margo muttered to Bert, standing and dusting off her suede skirt.

"W-Why?" Robin asked, his head still pounding as he tried to make sense of the situation. In a half-minded daze, he started healing himself in all the places Bert hadn't yet healed, or couldn't fully heal. The pain of his injuries felt numb against his own touch, as a growing panic started to settle in his stomach. "Wait, what's going on?"

Margo pulled out a broken wristband of red stones. As she held it in her palm, the large metallic clasp in the center broke off, crumbling into small pieces. 

Margo's frown deepened, and she cast a glance at Bert. "I'm not sure."

"What is that?"

Margo scoffed, looking at Robin, as if he had asked the stupidest question in the world.

"What do you mean, 'what's that?' It's part of Holly's heart stone. You should recognize it. She gave you the largest piece of it. And it just broke, despite not being in her presence. Which... is very bad."

"Her—" Robin dropped down onto the cold pine needles beneath him. The pins poking into his flesh as if torturing him for his foolishness. He felt so dumb. 

Of course, the metal was the stone, not the green jewel. That's what the powder had been in the drawer, the dark blue-gray metal was what all her pieces had in common, not the just the green stone she had said was her favorite, but the metal.

And, of course, Robin had willingly handed that metal to his brother.

"I—" Robin swallowed. "I thought the green jewels were her heart stone," he admitted, his face reddening, and humiliation filling  his chest as he slowly pulled the green stones from the necklace that had remained in his pocket.

Bert snorted, putting his head in his hands. "Well, it's nice to know you tried at least..." he mumbled.

"Listen, " Margo sighed, as she glanced at the green stones in Robin's hands, "the only way to take a heart is if it's given freely, or if the person dies. Nobody really kills someone over another sorcerer's heart, since a sorcerer's heart  doesn't give any particular powers once in someone's possession... so it's a bit taboo. But, if your brother is working with who I think he is, he would have taken that chance. It's good you gave it to him so he didn't have to kill you."

"My brother is working with the heart thief?"

Bert looked up at Margo with a concerned expression.

"Yes. That's what we think. That's what we have been thinking... and why we thought you were in on it, too. But you weren't, which threw us off. That must be the reason you weren't in on his plan in the first place."

"Hard to find evidence on an innocent man," Bert interjected.

"But why go through all this for just a piece?" Margo continued mumbling to herself. "Unless... a large enough piece is all he needs to use his power?"

"Hank wouldn't know unless he tried. Maybe a good-sized piece is more than enough for his powers," Bert murmured.

Margo let out a deep sigh.

Robin sat numb. Only the slight poke of pine needles beneath him and the pinch of betrayal slowly clenching his gut grounding him to the situation at hand. Even with Margo's explanation, Robin had a hard time believing what had just happened.

"Otto... would have killed me?"

"Well... I mean, we can't know that for certain... but he definitely left you to die," Bert replied awkwardly.

Robin swallowed. He both couldn't believe, and was starting to believe, that Bert's words were true.

"Listen, Robin, where did Holly go when she left the house today? The town, right? Where would she have headed?"

"I don't know; she just said she would be in town. Cookie should be with her."

Margo nodded, quickly turning to open a portal and running through it.

"It's going to be okay," Bert murmured, trying to be reassuring, but his voice sounded uncertain. "Margo has handled this before; we can handle this again."

"I had no idea my brother would do something like this. I haven't seen him in such a long time... I—I can't help but feel like I caused all of this." Robin admitted as his voice broke, his chest tightening with disbelief and guilt. Holly had been right. Otto had almost to kill him earlier, and he had tried to kill him again just now. He swallowed the growing knot of helplessness in his throat, trying to hold back the panic that threatened to consume him over his brother's betrayal.

"No," Bert replied with a laugh, shaking his head. "Not at all. Hank Furrow, who we think your brother is working with, always gets what he wants, regardless of who he has to walk over to get it. If anything, your brother dragged you into this. Which is the thing I just can't understand... Why would he sacrifice his own brother? I mean, if I had siblings, I can't imagine—"

Suddenly, Margo stepped back into the clearing with a cold and wet Cookie.

"I couldn't find Holly," she said, shaking her head. "Someone said they saw her disappear in front of their shop, but that was a long while ago."

"Shit," Bert mumbled with a sigh.

"Bert, search through the eyes of animals nearby to see if any of them have seen her. Hurry—any memory, anything current, any sign of her at all."

Bert nodded in agreement, humming and closing his eyes. He slipped both hands over his eyes, his fingers drumming on his eyelids in an erratic pattern. He occasionally peeked through his fingers, taking a moment to stare before him, before tightly closing his eyes again.

Robin watched in worried curiosity. He was always mesmerized by how sorcerers used their magic, it reminded him of a more masterful version of the spell Jo used to look through the door knocker.

Margo worriedly watched Bert as she paced back and forth. She began mumbling things under her breath as Bert's search stretched longer.

"I found something—a memory from a fly in an old barn not far from here."

Bert then pulled out what appeared to be broken eyeglasses, one with a mirror and one with a standard piece of glass, quickly setting them on his nose before glancing around the wooded clearing.

"Shit, we need a mirror," Bert yelled, standing to his feet, "Margo, quickly, a mirror, if you please."

Margo snapped her fingers, and a human-sized mirror appeared before them. Bert stationed himself in front of it, with Margo and Robin coming up behind him as a scene in an old barn slowly dissolved from the three's reflection.