Logan's P.O.V.
The eight of us were led into a small room where four people were standing behind a desk, all clothed in scrubs and bearing disconcerting expressions. With us eight, the nurse that led us there, and the four already present, it became clear that the room was not designed to hold so many people at once.

"Sanders," began a woman standing centered with the desk. "We four are a few of the staff members caring for your three patients. Now, we have tried asking the conscious girl this, as she is the only conscious of the three, but she is hysterical. So, we ask you, what happened?"

Virgil, who had been holding my left hand as Patton held my right, squeezed my hand tightly as his silent show of discomfort. Owen, Milly, Anthony, and Camille shifted uncomfortably where they stood.

"It's a rather long story," Anthony said. "But I suppose the best place to start would be Valentines Day. See, after we had all left, the kingdom was—"

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Milly interrupted. "We don't know what happened to Roman, some sort of light exploded from Lori and knocked everyone out, and Tori got cut by a sword."

The hospital staff seemed utterly confused by this simplified explanation. One of them opened his mouth like he was going to ask a question, but it closed as though he didn't know what to ask—or, more specifically, what to ask first.

"What sort of light came from Lori?" asked the man standing nearest the corner.

"It was bright and red," Owen replied. "But we don't know what happened or what made it explode or anything."

"Well, we only know as much about that light as you will tell us," said the woman who spoke to us first. She paused for a moment, then continued, "was Tori present during the.. 'explosion?'"

"Yes," the kids answered in unison.

"Might she understand what that light was?"

"Yes."

"Alright," continued the woman. "Then we ask that one of you try to speak to her. As I said, she is hysterical, but I believe that someone close to her may be able to talk her down."

"I'll do it," Camille volunteered. "I know a thing or two about being talked down, I'm sure I could go vice versa."

"Very well then," the woman said. "Come with me..?"

"Camille," Camille said.

"Yes, thank you. Come with me, Camille, I'll take you to Tori." She began walking out of the door, Camille trailing behind her, then turned and said to everyone else in the room, "you are dismissed."

~time skip~

We had been sitting in the waiting room for around twenty minutes, listening to Anthony explain in detail what happened while him and the other five searchers were away, when Camille came walking down the hallway, having returned from speaking to Tori.

"Hey Camille," Owen greeted happily, drawing everyone's attention away from Anthony and to her. She came closer, and suddenly Owen's gleeful grin dropped.

"What's wrong, kiddo?" Patton asked, standing up from his chair and rushing to Camille.

"Tori," the latter said, wiping her eyes. "She's so upset. Hysterical is barely enough to describe it." Camille looked at each of us as she said it, locking eyes with me for a time that appeared much shorter than the rest. As she looked from person to person, a confused expression washed over her.

"Where's Milly?" she asked. This question caused Virgil, who had his head held and face hidden by his hands, to look up. The rest of us looked around, all of us noticing for the first time that Milly, who had been at the back of the group at the start of Anthony's tale, was now nowhere to be seen.

Camille's P.O.V.
The woman led me down a few hallways without saying anything. About halfway to Tori's room, I started hearing a sound in the distance that grew louder with every step. As we got closer, I realized it was Tori—she was wailing like a banshee. No, I thought, not like a banshee. Banshees wail as a warning of death.

As we walked the final steps to Tori's room, I thought of the lesson when Logan thought us about legends and myths from different cultures. He told us before the lesson that he wanted us to understand that every culture is unique, and to understand the diversity between and within different cultures. I remembered that, while he was telling us about banshees, we were all so intrigued by them. I wished I could go back to that time, when we only learned about the warning wail of death rather than hear it.

"As you can tell, Camille," said the woman leading me, snapping me out of my thoughts. "Tori is in great distress. I need you to speak to her, calm her down, and figure out what that light was. Understood?"

"Yes," I said absently.

At last, we reached Tori's room. The woman opened the door to let me in, but she stayed behind. I slowly walked over to Tori, who was sitting up in her bed. Her upper half was drenched in tears while her right leg was wrapped from halfway up her calf to halfway up her thigh in bandages. Thinking that she might not hear me at first, I simply took her left hand in my right. She snapped her head up and locked eyes with me.

"Camille," she sobbed. "Is she alright? Is she alive? Is she awake?" I knew she was talking about Lori, so I squeezed her hand and shushed her.

"She's alive, Tori," I reassured her. "Lori is alive. But I need you to listen to me, alright?" She kept crying, seemingly even louder, so I said, a little stern, "Tori, you have to listen to me!" This time, Tori looked like she was listening to me, so I continued with the question I came to ask.

"Tori, in the cave, before we were all knocked out, there was this crimson light. Do you remember that?" Wiping her eyes, she glared at me with a look of excruciating pain.

"T-the light..." she began to say, stammering and sputtering as she tries to calm herself. "Is what p-people in our old v-village used to call a... m-magic burst. It happens w-when you use too much m-magic at once. The l-light is your magic leaving you. It's... it's like b-blood. Your body makes more, regenerates it, so if you l-lose a lot over a long stretch of time, it's alright. But if you lose all of your blood at once..."

Tori burst into tears again, grabbing my hand with both of hers tightly. With my free hand, I rubbed her arm consolingly. She opened her tightly shut eyes a few moments later and stared at me with a look that seemed to physically hit me. In her eyes I saw a lifetime of pain, all coming out at once. Grief for her mother's death, grief for her father's death, horror for Lori and Roman's injuries, sadness and anger and disappointment for the way she had to live most of her life.

I knew that pain. Because I knew that pain so well, I didn't mind the way her nails dug into my hand, or how I was starting to lose feeling in the tips of my fingers, or how her cries were piercingly loud and disturbing. She had all the right and reason to scream and cry and jab her nails into my hand and more.

After a few more minutes, she reached another period of calmness and released my hand. Though I wanted to stay with her, I knew I had to tell the doctor about the magic burst and go back to my family. So I bid a gentle goodbye to Tori, told the woman waiting for me about the magic burst, and went back to the waiting room where I found the rest of my family.

As I drew closer to them, I heard that Anthony was telling everyone what happened on our 'camping trip,' but he abruptly stopped when Owen greeted me. I must have looked as miserable as I felt, because Patton was quick to ask what was wrong. I gave a quick explanation that Tori was hysterical, then looked around the room. In a blur of bloody, sweaty, horror-stricken people waiting for a glimmer of hope, there was one person I didn't see: Milly.

A.N.
Alright, this time I'm just gonna skip trying to come up with some dumb(ledore) joke and get straight (unlike Dumbledore) to the point. If I were to do a quick survey at the end of this book, would anyone actually answer the questions? They'll be simple—who is your favorite character and why, for example—and there won't be many. The point of the survey will be to get a feel of what you readers like the most and the least about these books and my writing so I know what to keep up and what to improve.

Anyway, yeah, would anyone be willing to answer the questions? Adiós, guys, gals, and non-binary pals.