Chapter 40 – Past of the Earthloch Blood

「A curse!」 Elrhain muttered, 「Why is there a curse? Didn’t mother say dhionne don’t get sick easily?」

「She never said dhionne not once get sick, just rarely…」 Agwyn looked thoughtful,「… and in most cases, curses aren’t like typical diseases. That’s why they call them curses, because the stronger one is, the more likely it originated from malicious magic of either gheistrums or manna-rioghs!」

The patient of the curse, a young wife who looked around 20, now lay down on a bed of leaves and hay in the open yard in front of the hut. Her deer-like ears twitched as she weakly tried to open her sunken eyes, but the healer stopped her, telling her to sleep as she fed her a clear brew from a clay cup.

A circle of magic lit up above the young wife’s stomach under the healer’s command, and after a few minutes of hand gestures, she let out a tired sigh. She then gently placed her ear on top of the patient’s belly as if listening to something, and by the seconds, her face became paler.

By now, the cultivators had chased away all the unrelated people, and the only ones left there were Elrhain’s trio along with the husky, Adol, Slanout, the healer, a few of the cultivators, and a young man with green skin and leafy hair sitting listlessly on the hut's doorstep. Behind him, there was an elderly couple who shared his features, looking forlorn as they tried their best to comfort the young man.

「That should be Harund… and his parents, perhaps?」 Elrhain observed, and Agwyn nodded. The little girl was more interested in what the healer was doing, though.

「… Ah.」 Agwyn suddenly blanched.

「What’s wrong?」

「S-She’s pregnant!」 She replied, sure of her judgement. Elrhain frowned, then asked the Onthoakt just to confirm. The ape faced man grimly nodded.

“Harund’s couple had just married before we left Loch Slanout Village. She’s three seasons pregnant now. The child would have been the first babe born in our settlement. But now, alas….”

“… Is this Swampling’s Curse so fatal?”

Elrhain asked as Agwyn nervously tugged his sleeves. Onthoakt Slanout peered at the little boy for a while before sighing.

“For cultivators, it can’t do much. For a young and healthy mortal, they’ll lose muscle and might take a cycle to heal if it is bad. For the children and old, the damage might be permanent, and the meridians in their muscles will never be the same if so. But very rarely do they die. For a babe in their mother’s womb, however….”

Onthoakt Slanout shook his head as if he had given up all hope, then walked to young Harund and patted the man’s shoulder. Elrhain could tell that the Onthoakt, too, felt powerless before such a trial of life and death.

The husband, who looked no older than his wife, finally could not hold it in anymore and broke down into wails.

“My wife! My child! My first child!” He cried hysterically. He pulled himself free of the Onthoakt and ran to where his wife now lay. She slept so soundly like the world was now but a song of peace. He held her hand, his own quivering as though the same song had torn his heart into pieces.

“Why?! Why us?! Ahhh!”

It wasn’t a pretty sight. But no one mocked Harund, not the strong cultivators, and not even Adol, who had been quite haughty when speaking with servants during their brief tour.

They simply looked lost. The only thing they felt was empathy.

Looking at the other dhionnes’ expressions, as if they too could relate to Harund’s pain, Elrhain remembered one of his conversations with Cyra a few months ago.

******

“My, my, my, oh my little Rhain, why are you so na~ugh~ty!” said the malicious slug woman as she did her third raspberry on his chubby little tummy.

“Go somewhere else!” Elrhain tried to slap her face away in vain. A toddler was no match for a sky realmer, after all.

“Don’t you have better things to do?” The boy protested, “Go make Agwyn a little brother or something!”

At first, he simply meant that as a light joke. But Cyra’s reaction was way out of his expectations.

The mighty sky realmer jolted back as if stung by a bee. Cyra stared at Elrhain with a cloudy look on her face, then turned to look towards the sleeping Agwyn.

For a second, a thousand emotions passed through her visage. Sorrow, melancholy, rage, unwillingness, despair, denial, and finally, acceptance.

And then, she sobbed.

“Ah, W-What?” Elrhain was flustered, his hands waving in front of him in a panic. “W-Why are you crying?! I-I’m sorry!”

Cyra didn’t speak, just hugged the little boy and rubbed her wet face on his recently raspberried belly.

“Hey! You’re taking advantage of me again.”

“Ahahaha~” Cyra suddenly burst out laughing, then wiped away the tears from her eyes as she looked at Elrhain’s own, her two glossy irises laden with a mother’s unmasked love. Elrhain blushed, trying to look away. But Cyra would have none of it. It wasn’t until ten minutes later when she, at last, was satisfied snuggling him.

“Rhain, you say the strangest things sometimes. Ey, Gwyn will have her hands full when you get married.”

Elrhain tilted his head. He did not know what was up with this woman. First crying, now laughing. But her eyes were red. It didn’t seem like she was faking it. But one thing was for sure. Even though he was always exhausted as a beached whale with all the violent hugs and cuddles from his two mothers in recent days, he had to admit, it felt good.

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This was a privilege only toddlers could enjoy, and secretly in his mind, he decided to take full advantage of it!

But later. Because it looks like Cyra had something important to say. So he took a few breaths of time to steady himself and looked her in the eye again.

The now not-so-bubbly slug woman gently stroked his bushy hair as she lay down beside him. “You don’t know how much you mean to us, you mini meanie.”

She lightly kissed his puffy cheeks. “You are smart. You look like a baby, but father always says you have the soul of a sage hidden inside your tiny body.”

Elrhain looked the other way, sweating nervously. He inwardly contemplated if the klutzy slug woman had found out about their transmigration.

“And I agree. Not just you, but Gwyn too. You two little smarty butts!” Cyra giggled, then gently turned his head to face her. “That’s why you have to always be safe, okay? You have to live a long life! It doesn’t matter if you don’t cultivate or if your talent is low. We’ll find a way to raise both of your realms together in the safest possible way. All you two have to do is be good and play cute!”

“Eh! No way, I got ambitions too, you know- “

He was interrupted again when Cyra put her index finger on his lips, “Because… I don’t think I can give Gwyn a little brother to play with.

Rhain, the main house is so lucky in this generation. We have so many healers that serve us, so many extraordinary shamans and mages. It’s our blessing that…. all of your cousins successfully saw the light of the Sohwl without tragedy. But you know….

It wasn’t like this when in Brommy’s cohort. At that time, a devastating war had just ended with five neighbouring discs, and everyone was busy recouping losses. Yes, Uoris lost in that war, so every house and every tribe and every sect did whatever they could to sire more children. You know of Uncle Stormfelt, right?”

“Ya, uncle Morys’s pops? I heard he was, err, he passed away?”

Cyra nodded. “He had three babes; two died before maturing. Your grandpa fathered a daughter before Brommy; she died when she was barely half a cycle. Father also had a sister who gave birth to four daughters during her long life, and only two are alive today. In that generation, nine babes were born in the main house’s primary branch, only four survived.”

Elrhain gasped, “W-What!” He thought for a bit before asking, “Wait, then what about all the other uncles and aunties?”

But another kiss on the cheeks was her reply, “Aw~ Look at you such an adult-wike face. So cute!”

“Stop it! What happened then? You can’t just quit at the important part!”

“Okay, geez. Brommy, Morys, Meredith, and Brigdhe are the only four directly from the main branch. Ah, auntie Brigdhe is young Ariana’s and your older cousin Albert’s mother. Everyone else was actually part of the side branches of our Earthloch main house. That is until father thought this segregation was the work of fools and removed any such tradition from our house rules.”

“Smart choice.” Elrhain praised, and Cyra booped his nose with a grin.

“Listen, Rhain, it’s not so easy to make a little brother for Gwyn. Not even mentioning that I am a Faediaga, even for normal dhionne marriages, it takes tens of cycles for a girl to be ready for a babe again. The egg has to be nourished with good manna rich food and medicine, and the wife cannot take in seeds willy nilly. Only after she has… ahaha!… You understand what I am saying?”

Elrhain shifted his eyes but nodded nonetheless.

“Aww~ you little pervert, Eluned is so naughty teaching you these. Or was it the Archive Keepers, those old creeps!”

Elrhain didn’t correct her misunderstanding. ‘Sorry Grandpa Archive keepers, this air-head is the one at fault for coming to the conclusion!’

“Anyway, we can’t just bear kids whenever we want. It takes blood, flesh, and so much heart and soul. But the real reason is the child-taking curses. Unless a babe is nourished sufficiently in the womb, they can succumb too easily.”

“…. Do many newborns die in our Siorrakty?”

With complicated eyes, Cyra affirmed, “Yes. One in three for the servants, since they can barely collect enough nutritious, manna-rich food for the wife. Before father Thundham beat down all opposition to support Elder Croneira in her work, it was also about the same for nobles. Even in the main house…

Actually, Elder Croneira, she… she really is such a goddess. If she hadn’t lost all her daughters that time, Brommy would have two more cousins, and you would have two more aunties to pamper you. Now, she is neglecting even her own cultivation to find ways to stop such deaths, so no mother has to suffer through that pain again. She knows best how to keep a babe plump and healthy and so sweet to kiss!”

With that came the nth kiss on the cheek. Elrhain didn’t mind and scratched his head, asking, “So the newborn death is much lower now?”

Cyra shook her head. “For the main house, yes. Some nobles also follow Elder Croneira’s practices. They send apprentices from their houses to study under her. But that’s about it.”

“Then the servants?”

“Elder Croneira is a mage, a great healer who has mastery over many oceanic grade spells she herself developed to heal mothers and babes, even when she is barely in the 5th circle. Her methods are ingenious, but there is a cost. They require many magical materials as catalysts. While we hope that one day we can deliver every babe in the Siorrakty without loss, for now, it's just not possible… Wait!”

“Huh?”

Cyra sat up with a start. “It might be possible!”

Elrhain couldn’t follow her thought process at all, so he simply put his thumb in his mouth and sucked on it.

The little boy then yawned. All this brainstorming about the clan’s newborn mortality was making him sleepy.

“The collapse, dummy!”

“Oooh… yeah. That, how could I have possibly forgotten—“ Cyra picked him up and showered him with more boops and smooches all over his face, “Oh you, oh you angel, you cheeky widdle god of fortune~muah~.”

“Yeah, let me sleep, please.”

“~muah~I must speak of this with Elder Croneira at once! No, tomorrow then!~muah~.”

Elrhain yawned again, not caring about her antics. When Cyra finally put him down on the bed, he used the now bubbling slug woman as a squishy body pillow since Agwyn was too far away and he was barely awake enough to lift his limbs.

But then… a corner of his lips curled up as he felt another warm body hug him from behind. The sleeping beauty must have felt something missing, so she could not help but scoot over towards her prince charming.

*******

That night, he could not really comprehend with his heart what Cyra talked about, even if he understood the facts and logic from Earth’s own history.

But now he could.

Yes, the Swampling’s Curse was a child-taking curse. It wasn’t only that, since it could infect anyone regardless of if the victim was a pregnant woman.

But for the latter cases especially, it was a nightmare.

As he was brooding on what he should do while comforting Agwyn, the situation suddenly changed.

“H-Healer! My wife!” Young Harund cried out.

The deer-eared woman who had been quietly sleeping abruptly gasped in for breath with eyes wide open, as if she was suffocating.

Even as the healer cast a healing spell and tried to feed her some medicinal paste, the wife violently shoved her hands away, then started retching white bile all over the place.

A few seconds later, even her bottom side became wet as a pungent smell spread out. But the only emotions on the onlookers’ faces were solemn solitude.

Harund’s wife retched and purged from both above and below for tens of minutes before collapsing again, completely out of breath and out of soul. Her husband was squatting powerlessly on the side, not knowing what to do.

After cleaning up her twitching body with cleansing spells, the healer checked on the unborn babe again before exhaling with fatigue.

“P-Please,” Harund begged.

“…. The child still yet lives… but Servant Harund, the curse wrecks havoc in Servant Nana’s body….”

“N-No, there must be something we can do! You are a healer, I beg you!”

The healer shook her head with a pained visage, and at last, the tired youth could take it no longer and curled into a pitiful ball of grief beside his ailing wife.

But at that point, both Elrhain and Agwyn’s gazes had turned razor-sharp. Among all the disturbing purging, the healer’s treatment, and some of the symptoms they had just gleaned from apprentice Adol, the two otherworldly souls noticed a simple, invisible fact that only they could have seen.