“You can sit in the Healing Room, Mister Careed. Miss Wuthers will need looked at, following by a stay in a Healing Room.”

Mark said ‘see ya later’ to Sally at the intake for Freyala’s House of Healing, with him headed right and her headed left. It had been a fucking chore to get here on the bikes first, and then on a stop on the tram, but both of them were here now, and soon they’d get healed.

Mark crashed onto one of the empty chairs in the Healing Room and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he took a glance at his surroundings. This was pretty much a waiting room like at any doctor’s office, but with Freyala’s ‘iconography’ everywhere. Almost none of it was professional iconography, though, so did it even count as such? They must have thought so to have so much of it up there.

Hand-drawn art from kids done in crayon and colored pencil, thanking Freyala for healing them, or their parents, hung everywhere, some of it layered on top of each other. A lot of it was the same line drawing, printed on cheap paper and then crayoned over by small, inexact hands. A full stack of the same coloring papers rested on a low table in the middle of the room, along with jar-fulls of wax crayons. There was even blank paper for kids to draw their own works of art, to pin onto the walls. The walls had so many pins on them; they must be made of corkboard.

Many of the drawings had little notes of thank you on them. ‘Thanks for healing daddy!’ or ‘Mommy is better! Thank you!’ or the like. Many of the letters were inexact, but some of the kids had obviously had coaching on what to write down. There was a ‘Thank you for fixing dad’s broken back!’ that was particularly well written. Maybe it was just a smart kid, though. Mark had been a smart kid. Or at least his parents had told him that. He had made up drawings like this when he was that age, ten years ago.

Mark smiled at all of it.

He liked Freyala the best because she was simply good. There was nothing untoward in her messaging. Just ‘heal everyone and protect everyone’. Simple stuff. Freyala had risen in the Reveal, like pretty much all the gods of the New Pantheon (the only still-existent Pantheon). Her story was one of healing plagues released by the reunion of worlds. Big magics, done 75-ish years ago.

Freyala was at the forefront of healing everything, really. Hearthswell, the other god(dess) who provided healing magic, was more about cultivating civilization.

Sally’s choice of Drakarok as a patron was… an unorthodox choice, to be sure. Apparently the guy had a great reputation over on Daihoon, but on Earth, before he was a god, General Alexander Volkov was most well known for the murder of 4 different world leaders and 250 staff, all at the same time, as well as preventing World War 4 because he had murdered those people. World War 4 still happened, but they called it World War Not, because it was mostly just the complete dissolution of many of the normal governments of the world failing to stay together; Civil wars everywhere. Not many big cross-country wars.

To say that Drakarok was a controversial figure on Earth would be underselling that fact by a lot.

To say that Drakarok was lauded on Daihoon would also be underselling it.

He was still in the Pantheon, though. He was still a main god—

Oh.

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Mark relaxed, as the full-body sting he had been experiencing ever since his bout with Sally, was gone. Something had flicked and relaxed inside his body, and now the pain was a partial sting, mostly confined to his hands and his left leg. Mark’s ungloved hands were still bloody, but it was dried and flaking away, vanishing under godly might. Some sort of cleansing magic, really.

Mark smiled at how fast he was being healed.

Mark almost wanted to draw Freyala a little picture of something as thanks… And maybe he would!

He glanced around and saw he was the only one in the room, so he grabbed a clipboard, a piece of paper, and a blue crayon, and drew a little picture of an angel in a blue dress. It was a pretty normal depiction of Freyala. Mark finished it off with a ‘Thank you for the healing!’ and then he tacked it onto the wall, in one of the emptier spaces.

By the time he was done with that he was fully healed.

Mark wasn’t sure how they healed him, exactly, but he knew the mirror in the room was actually a one-way mirror, and people behind that glass were watching him and casting spells, and maybe that would be him one day, if he chose to ask for Freyala’s help in life. She’d tell him ‘report here for these many days per month and heal people!’ and Mark would do it.

Drakarok requested one monster kill a month from his people, which was normal for him, but Freyala and Hearthswell, the two healing gods, required that they heal others with the gifts those gods bestowed.

Mark was rather on-the-fence regarding a divine patron, but…

“It wouldn’t hurt to ask what the actual requirements were, right?”

Mark always liked the idea of not getting hurt in battle, too, so Freyala was the better choice of healing gods, since her other thing was Protection. Hearthswell was more about making homes and families and communities.

Mark stopped at the front desk again, saying, “I’m interested in getting Freyala as a patron for warrior stuff out in the world, but I’m not actually doing any of that right now at all, and maybe not for years. I’m still under Curtain Protocol. I think I’m asking about the Chosen system, becoming a devotee to Freyala, but not sure if that’s what I want, exactly? Who can I talk to about that?”

The person behind the counter was just a secretary, so she tapped away at her console in front of her, and then looked up to Mark, asking, “If it’s a general questioning, how about an appointment for a meeting in a week with a Priest? Next Wednesday some time?”

“Sure!”

“Morning or afternoon?”

Mark made his appointment, and was soon out of there.

As Mark was on the tram, not waiting for Sally who had already texted him that she had left, he smiled.

So! The Tutorial was a bust.

This secondary option was shaping up to be a whole lot more what he wanted. Healing and Protection —if this Freyala thing worked out— and also Telekinesis. That was, like, a perfect combination, right?

As Mark stared out of the tram window, a thought occurred.

Could he even do all of that?

He had no idea how magic actually worked, but he did know that people who entered into the Chosen system under a god usually got minor divine abilities in exchange for doing work, usually called quests. So, theoretically, he should be able to do both Telekinesis and Healing and Protection… Or maybe just Telekinesis and Healing and maybe protection…

“Or maybe just telekinesis and healing, all minor like; not capitalized,” Mark mumbled to himself, as he pedaled his bike toward home.