Lise ran up beside Ash and watched nervously. She didn't want to lose Puck, like she lost everyone else.

Isiea gets back onto Ares. She's done what she could, but in the end she doesn't care about Puck.

Two figures stepped out of the tree trunks, materializing into view. They were both slender women, with moss-green hair and skin like polished mahogany. Beetle-black eyes peered out as the dryads stepped forward, the smell of fresh earth and bark thick in the air. Grimalkin and Ash nodded respectfully.

"We know why you have come," one dryad said, her voice the sigh of wind through the leaves. "The breeze carries whispers to us, news of faraway places. We know of your plight with the Iron King. We have been waiting for you, children of two worlds."

She stays silent.

Lise stared at them, glancing nervously at Ash and Grim.

"Death is a part of life." The dryad regarded Lise with pitiless black eyes. "All things fade eventually, even one as long-lived as Puck. People will forget his stories, forget he ever was, and he will cease to be. It is the way of things."

The dryads wouldn't help; they'd just doomed Puck to die.

" S-so...you... won't help him? " Her voice cracked a bit at the end.

Isiea stares at Puck disinterestedly.

The dryads spoke in quiet voices to one another for a long while. They nodded again, and one of them lifted Puck around the waist, dragging him toward her tree. They both melted into the bark and disappeared.

She watched them drag him off, and waited.