Release

[Konstantin K]

Last two things he remembered were giving the Sandberry to the Spirit, and asking It to exchange his life for Zarah's...

Flash of Light.
The feeling of a long fall. A crashing sound. Pain.

Konstantin wakes up and finds himself returned from the Spirit World into his physical body. He is bound with pain and the feeling of weakness in every part of it.
Barely managing to look himself over, he finds that nearly every rib is broken, the right leg is in terrible shape. What was his face before - became a red-blue mush of blood, bones, and hair. Mouth and nose are constantly bleeding. One eye is almost out, the other is bleeding, but still having sight.

K barely gets up and crawls on the grass. Reaches the pavement. He recognizes streets of Troll's Bane. He stumbles his way to the shop, leaving a red trail of blood behind.
He sees some people, his head starts to ache, he walks away.

He makes his way to the Falkner's Shrine, seeing almost nothing. Blood keeps flowing out of his wounds. He finds no potions in his bag. No energy.
He makes a few steps in the direction of Troll's Bane again. He sees Rustas Ocklam, the hobbit who never liked him, and whom he never liked. He falls on his knees, and passes out from blood loss.

He wakes up to his surprise, seeing Rustas healing his wounds with medicine magic and washing his clothes in Holy Water. K finds both of his gray eyes functioning.
-Normally, I would be a lot meaner you know - Rustas chuckles.

K doesn't object, neither does he resist to what Rustas does to him. He understands that during this strange time it's best not to ask questions.
With a lot of pain for the wounded one, Rustas uses magic to grow Konstantin's cracked leg bones together.
When he feels more or less himself, K starts to help Rustas to heal himself, bandages his own wounds, drinks a few energy potions, and asks Rustas about the outcome of the quests. Rustas tells him the general outcome without much details.

-We won. It's raining.

K realizes that it was raining the whole time he was up.
Rustas finishes K's treatment to the point where he can stand up, and reasonably think about what happened. He remembers some details about the quests. The Spirits, the imprisonment, the riddles, failure of the first group to save them, Grant Herion, Nerevar, Ashburg, Hagen...

"Zarah!" - he thinks.
Rustas tells K that she is fine, and K gets up quickly.
-Thank you, man, I owe you one. - K says and exits the shop, heading towards Zarah's home.

He reaches Zarah's garden, and feels tired again. She is not there. He sits by the bush and falls asleep.

[Zarah]

A bit later Zarah comes back to her garden.
When she recognizes Konstantin she begins to run in a hurry and finally
reaches him...sleeping...without a movement. She bows herself over (?)
him and touches his face softly.

"My dear, what happened?" she asks in
a calm tone, already beginning to cry. "Everywhere I searched for you,
I knew something had happened."

"Zarah..."-Konstantin tries to straighten up but failes.

Zarah recognizes blood on his clothes and begins to search for wounds. But...nothing is broken...she only finds closed wounds.

"What happened my dear?" she asks.
"The earth spirit..." he barely manages to breathe "...I don't wanted
you to go." he touches her arm softly. "Too dangerous...but you were gone...so I urged him to let me go instead of you..."

Bowed over him she gives him a kiss and whispers:"You shouldn't have done that my dear. I am fine, but I will use all my energy to get you up again."

Saying this she goes for some fruits, meats and healing potions to give him.

"It's better we leave the garden for it rains since yesterday." Zarah says.

A bit later she helps Konstantin to get up. And both go the way to his hut in Northeroth. Everynow and then Zarah looks around for hopefully noone crosses their way.
When they arrive at his house she lays him in bed and checks his bandages again, she removes them for new ones with herbs.

"Sleep my dear. I will be here for you. I will never leave you. Tell me if you need something." she says still sorrowed but not showing it. He reaches out for her hand which is as warm as always. He nods and falls asleep very fast. Zarah begins to sing an old song in elven language sung by her mother usually.
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