Chapter 16 — Cookies, Kata, and Capsids
Freshly baked bread dominated every other smell, even as Rína sat in the living quarters above the bakery. Across the room from her, a pregnant woman was being attended to by Yvette. The woman, Dimitra, looked only a year or two older than Rína and was due in another two months. Apparently she had miscarried and had a stillbirth before, and with news of a traveling healer being in town, her husband Nikolaos had braved a snowstorm to come ask for any assistance Yvette could give.
Footsteps came from the stairwell, soon resolving the husband in question. He was about his wife’s age and wearing the flour covered apron of his profession. In his arms he bore a tray of cookies which he set down on the small kitchen table at which Rína sat. His eyes immediately locked onto his wife across the room, but he kept his distance, seeming to not want to interrupt.
“So is everything alright?” He whispered to Rína, wringing his hands.
“Yvette might be a while longer,” Rína said, motioning to the woman’s ongoing faux examination of Dimitra, “but you don’t have to worry about a thing; Dimitra’s in good hands.”
“Right, right…” Nikolaos nodded as he took shaky breaths, “Well, uh, I made these for the three of you—four if you count the little one,” he chuckled nervously, “Is there anything I can do?”
“Oh, thanks. And no,” Rína gave the man a closer look, “Honestly, I think you’re just going to stress yourself out unnecessarily if you stay here. Here: if you head back down, I can come grab you if there’s anything to report.”
He glanced around uneasily before nodding, “You might be right… Alright. I suppose I still have some orders to fill too, but get me the second there’s anything.”
“Will do.” Rína nodded.
“Thank you,” he said before disappearing back down the stairs.
Rína waited another minute for Yvette’s fake examination to finish, the woman taking much more time than she normally did. A week ago they were treating an elderly man with a pinched nerve and he was on his way with ‘joint healing ointment’ within a minute, but just now Yvette had taken maybe twenty minutes.
Regardless, Rína took the tray of cookies to the bed Yvette had Dimitra sitting up in.
“Cookie?” she asked the other women.
“Oh yes, please,” Dimitra said, as Rína also grabbed one for herself and Yvette politely declined, “Oh no Rína, I’d stay away from the ones with the reddish glaze: it’s made of tomato, garlic, and cinnamon,” she explained, biting into a red glazed cookie.
Rína’s eyes boggled at the madwoman before she remembered the woman’s expectant state, then quickly swapped her cookie for a different one.
“So… What’s the verdict?” Dimitra began, looking expectantly at Yvette.
“Perfectly healthy, you and the pregnancy. As far as I can tell, your previous pregnancies were just a matter of terrible luck.” Yvette said.
Dimitra released a heavy breath before a soft smile crossed her face, “That’s—You have no idea how good that is to hear. Thank you.” she shook her head as the corners of her eyes started to water, “You know after the last one, Niko’s mother started up talk that my womb was cursed and that I was a bad match for her son, and all that.”
Rína scowled, “Next time you see your mother-in-law, do us a favor and spit in her eye.”
Dimitra barked a laugh as she wiped away a tear that had come loose, “Don’t tempt me. Though I’d love to see the look on her face if I did.”
A thought occurred to Rína and she looked towards Yvette, “Are we sure there won’t be any complications during the actual birth?”
Yvette shook her head, “There are risks during every birth, but this pregnancy does not seem riskier than any other. I should mention however, that you may expect said birth a month or two later than in your original timeline, but again, there is no cause for concern.”
“Oh? Well, if you say there’s nothing to worry about…” Dimitra considered, “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to be a midwife for me when the day comes? I don’t want to presume, but it’s just that we don’t have a dedicated healer in town. We have a few midwives, but having a professional healer with me would really put me at ease.”
“Oh… uh,” Rína grimaced as her hands clenched on their own.
“I am afraid we will have moved on to Westreach by then.” Yvette said.
Dimitra looked at the other women quizzically, “After yesterday’s snowstorm, I doubt anyone will be going anywhere until spring.”
“Pardon?” Yvette asked.
“Oh, I suppose you wouldn’t know,” Dimitra said, “Our valley gets infamously heavy snows this time of year. And with how steep and narrow all the passes out of the valley are, the amount of snow that piles up there gets kind of ridiculous. Niko said you two are in a great big ox pulled wagon?”
“Correct.” Yvette said.
“Well there might be a chance the snows clear before the next storm, but I kind of doubt it. Actually, from now until spring, I doubt anyone will be going anywhere except by dogsled or snowshoe; and a heavy wagon like yours may as well be a stationary hut.”
“Hmm, well I suppose it was only a matter of time before we were snowed in for the rest of the season.” Yvette considered, “In that case we would be happy to be your midwives.”
“Thank you.” Dimitra bowed her head.
Rína quietly released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, “So, uh, if we’re going to be staying here a while, what even is this town’s name?”
“Oh, well, you see the town is nameless.” Dimitra tittered, eliciting a raised eyebrow from Rína. Dimitra then addressed Yvette, “Uh, is there anything else, or are we done?”
“There is one last thing,” Yvette pulled a small pill from inside her coat, “Swallow this—it promotes nutritional health, especially important for pregnant women, though it does make one quite drowsy immediately afterward.”
Rína, having seen Yvette hand out this kind of pill before, was already on her feet, fetching Dimitra a cup of water before Yvette even finished speaking.
“Oh, thank you very much,” Dimitra said, taking the cup and pill in each hand, “I suppose you must have been taking one of these every day you were pregnant with Rína.”
Rína gaped, “Oh! Um, well—”
“No.” Yvette widened her eyes, “You are mistaken: you see—”
Rína cut back in, “Yeah, she’s just my—” Rína smirked, “She’s just my dear elder aunty.”
“Ah, yes that’s—” Yvette frowned, composing herself before glaring at Rína, “I should never have told you that.”
“Oh, sorry…” Dimitra said, looking embarrassed and taking the opportunity to swallow the pill and water, “I just assumed from… how… you…”
Dimitra slumped back against the bed’s pillows, immediately asleep.
Rína paused a moment, then faked a cough, taking the woman’s state as an invitation to change the subject, “You know, it’s still pretty unnerving how fast that takes effect.”
“Hmm? Oh. Perhaps, but it is still relatively slow compared to the aerosolized version.”
“That’s…” Rína shook her head, “So what’s wrong? Is the baby actually ok?”
“I was telling the truth about the pregnancy: perfectly healthy with only bad luck to blame for the previous ones. Her own health is another matter.” Yvette continued in her professorial tone, “The trouble is that for the last eight months she’s had headaches, nausea, vomiting, an altered sense of taste, and lethargy.”
“Ok?” Rína quirked an eyebrow, “I mean that just sounds like pregnancy.”
“Yes, but—actually, have a look for yourself,” Yvette said, giving Rína’s soul a slight tap with her aura.
Rína nodded and took a deep breath while closing her eyes. Slowly she projected her aura out towards Yvette, careful not to go anywhere near Dimitra. A week ago, they had a patient and Rína had accidentally given their soul a poke—it wasn’t pretty, and they had to explain that the sudden vomiting and ‘hallucinations’ were just a rare allergic reaction to the definitely-not-just-tea medicine they had given them.
Rína’s aura met Yvette’s a moment later, or at least she met a protrusion of the woman’s aura. Instead of pushing through it, Rína pulled hers back so it was just barely not touching, and then continued to expand her aura around that point. Like a cloth being draped over a statue, so too did Rína’s aura drape over Yvette’s, with just the barest gap between the two to keep them from fizzling each other.
As for the shape Yvette’s aura had taken? Going purely by touch, Rína was able to tell that it was an oversized rendering of Dimitra’s uterus, babe and all. And as it was a three dimensional rendering at a four dimensional depth in the Astral, Rína was able to ‘see’ all the way through it. Yvette had included details like the baby’s internal organs, both its and Dimitra’s veins, and probably even more, but there was a limit to what Rína could pick out with her aura control.
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“Yeah, still looks like a pregnancy,” Rína shrugged, “I’m really not sure what I should be looking for.”
“How old would you say the pregnancy was?” Yvette asked.
“I don’t know, maybe six or seven months.” Rína furrowed her brow as she opened her eyes and retracted her aura, “Wait, that can’t be right.”
“Unfortunately, it is. It would appear these symptoms predated the pregnancy’s actual symptoms by around a month or two. In conjunction with an irregular monthly blood, the couple must have concluded they conceived earlier than they did.”
“Ok, then…” Rína frowned, “I don’t know, could it be something with her digestive system? That could explain the nausea and vomiting. The tiredness and headaches could be from her body not absorbing enough calories or certain nutrients, which might give her some weird cravings. And she might have interrupted those as a change of taste—but that might be a stretch.”
“It’s still a good guess,” Yvette nodded, “In fact her digestive system was the first place I looked after I saw that the fetus was younger than it should be. But no, it’s in perfect order as is the rest of her body that I could see—which itself was the clue.”
“What do you…” Rína trailed off, “It’s her brain.”
“Correct. And I am convinced she has cancer. It would appear her bad luck persists for her to get something like this at such a young age.”
“Then, I mean, is there anything you can do for her?” Rína said, a hint of desperation in her voice, “Are you absolutely sure it’s cancer?”
“I checked her bloodstreams into and out of her brain, and I can confirm that her immune system seems to be fighting cancerous cells somewhere inside. And while no, I cannot directly affect the tumor with biomancy, there are workarounds.”
“I thought the brain was off limits? So are there workarounds for all the other brain stuff?”
Yvette sighed as her eyes fell, “Unfortunately not. Brain tumors, for all their complexity, are among the few maladies that can be reliably dealt with. Whereas something as simple as a cerebral blood clot or a burst blood vessel can kill a person before a Weaver even has time to locate the anomaly.” Yvette exhaled heavily, “And repairing the senescence of a brain seems to be forever out of reach—at least among those who have already been born.”
Rína furrowed her brow, “What do you mean ‘already been born’?”
Yvette opened her mouth to respond but considered otherwise, “That is a very long story and lesson—best saved for another time.” Yvette returned to her professorial tone, “But back to the matter of brain tumors: if not directly with biomancy, how else might we go about this?”
Rína gave Yvette a suspicious glance before turning her focus to the problem. There was surgery of course, but Rína doubted they would have enough uninterrupted time for something like that. Yvette only ever knocked out patients if her means of healthcare weren’t easily hidden, which implied surgery, but Yvette didn’t even own any surgeon’s tools.
Yvette might be able to synthesize a compound inside Dimitra’s blood to attack the tumor. However, to actually damage a tumor, the compound would have to be damaging to her normal cells, which would be a death sentence for the baby. Maybe Yvette could synthesize the compound into Dimitra’s bloodstream right before the brain and then filter it out or break it down as it left her brain, but that would still damage the woman’s healthy brain tissue.
Rína took a bite of the nearly forgotten cookie in her hand. It was good—a ginger cookie with a honey and lilac glaze—but not nearly as good as Yvette’s cooking. Rína idly noted how the light brown cookie almost perfectly matched the pregnant woman’s skin tone, except for the topping. If the main cookie was her body, then the topping would have to be her soul roots, or maybe just her soul as a whole that was in the way.
Rína frowned. Then turned the cookie over to its uncovered bottom. Then back to its covered top. Then back again.
“Hey, Yvette…?” Rína began.
“Yes Rína?”
“If her soul roots are in the way, and her soul as a whole is perpendicular to the physical, why not just affect her brain from the other side of the physical. Like, the underside, or I guess topside, or reverse side or—”
“Kata.” Yvette supplied.
“What?”
“The word you are looking for is ‘kata’. In three dimensions you have left-right, up-down, and forward-backward defining the three axes of movement. The direction pair for the fourth dimension is ana-kata, where all souls are on the ana side of the physical.”
“Yeah, so on the kata side there won’t be any—” Rína furrowed her brow, “Sorry, you said all souls are on the ana side? Like all of them? How is that even possible? Is the other side—erh, kata side—different somehow?”
“No, except for its lack of souls or other naturally occurring crystallized aether, the kata side is utterly identical. Any untethered weighted aether on the kata side will still fall away from the physical and into the Astral. The fact that all souls are on the same side of the physical is one of the strongest pieces of evidence—second only to genetics—that all life evolved from a common ancestor.”
Rína blinked hard, as if slapped in the face, “Sorry what? What exactly do you mean by ‘evolved’? And how could a single person give birth to literally all life? I mean I’ve heard priests of Daefos talking about all humans coming from—” Rína shook her head, “This is going to be another long one, isn’t it?”
Yvette grinned, “Indeed. To answer your original question: No, approaching from the kata side is not an option, and for two reasons. Firstly, every soul has a film of aura across its surface, but especially in and around the soul roots. The film is quite thin though, so you may not have noticed it on your own roots. Secondly, for reasons that deserve a full lesson, some of the aura in and around soul roots will slip onto the kata side of the physical. It’s not much, and it immediately falls away as it passes over, but for the purposes of biomancy it may as well be a second set of roots.”
“Hmm, wait, does that mean that no matter how good my control gets, I’ll always lose some aura?”
“The actual amount will be trivial, but yes, at least until your soul deepens and you can project an aura on both sides of the physical. However, we still have a patient.”
“Right, uh” Rína sighed, “Well surgery seems like the only good option, and if that’s what you’re going for it would explain why you put Dimitra to sleep, but you don’t have any surgeon’s tools with you.”
“While I won’t be performing surgery, not exactly, I do in fact have the tools,” Yvette said as she raised her hand, “What do you think I was doing during the prolonged examination?”
Rína stared as from the tip of Yvette’s finger, an incredibly thin, blood colored thread unspooled.
“You know, sometimes I forget that your body isn’t exactly ‘standard’.” Rína said as she couldn’t take her eyes off the thread that drifted in the air instead of falling limp.
“Gods forbid, no,” Yvette chuckled as she placed her finger on Dimitra’s throat, “I don’t know your opinion of your body but I promise you that once you have your mage sight, that opinion will only drop.”
Rína scowled, “Hey, I think my body looks fine as is.”
“Hmm?” Yvette raised an eyebrow, “Oh yes, of course, but,” Yvette gave Rína an impish grin, “I have heard that it is what is on the inside that counts, but inside every human body you will only find deplorable engineering. And speaking of inside…” Yvette said as she gave Rína’s soul another nudge.
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Flesh threads were a mainstay tool of every Flesh Weaver, as one never knew when hostile aether would make usual biomancy untenable. However, flesh threads were always a hassle to use. Given their usual size constraints, manipulators and sensory organs had a hard upper limit on their quality. Compared to usual biomantic sight and manipulation, flesh threads felt like blind grasping in the dark.
Nevertheless, Yvette was happy with the modifications she had made to hers during the faux examination of the woman. The changes were relatively simple and were mostly just to avoid the attention of the woman’s immune system, but the most important one was the alteration to the thread’s sense of smell.
Practically every immune system, regardless of species, sends out messenger proteins to signal whenever there is a serious threat that needs to be mobilized against. They are essentially a way for the immune system to call for reinforcements, and today reinforcements would indeed arrive, but they would be in the form of Yvette’s thread, following its metaphorical nose to the tumor.
But Yvette first had to get into the woman’s bloodstream. Yvette used her normal aether threads to disable the nerve endings in the skin above the woman’s jugular, numbing the area. Then she sent her flesh thread in, it being only a few millimeters thick. The thread had a sharp tip of enamel, and it passed through the layers of skin and fatty tissue without resistance. By design, the tip was even narrower than the rest of the thread which resulted in the thread being slightly squeezed by the surrounding flesh, thus creating a seal between each layer. Still beyond the woman’s brain, Yvette made use of her mage sight to guide herself into a vein coming from the brain.
She pierced into the vein and began pushing against the flow of blood. Yvette continued to unspool the thread from her fingertip as its end soon fell under the shadow of the woman’s soul roots.
Yvette grimaced as she now had to navigate solely based on the mundane nerve signals traveling down the thread—signals that only gave her touch and smell information. The aura rendering she was making for Rína had to dramatically drop in detail, but there still just enough information to navigate by. Yvette could smell the woman’s immune system calling for help, and with her sense of touch—and the sharp tip retracted for safety—she was able to blindly grope her way through branches of narrowing veins as the smell became stronger still.
Soon Yvette redeployed the enamel spike, piercing back out of the bloodstream as she arrived at her target. It was an anomalous lump of flesh that reeked of the body’s alarm. Its exact size was impossible for Yvette to gauge, but it was no matter as it would soon be dead. She deployed a second sharp spike of enamel, followed by a third—the small orifice from which they deployed now resembling a small mouth ringed by a trio of teeth.
Yvette couldn’t take full credit for the design, she had adapted it from a certain parasitic worm, though she had to say that it worked quite well. She took a single bite out of the tumor, swallowing it and sending it back towards the rest of her body. Compared to the size of the tumor, the bite was inconsequential. Even if she had more threads and time, her approach to the tumor would neither be by tooth nor claw—the risk of missing cancerous cells or damaging the surrounding tissue was simply too great given her blinded state.
Instead, Yvette waited for the single bite, the sample, to get out from under the woman’s soul roots. The moment it did, she interrogated every protein of every cancerous cell with her aether threads. Like every instance of cancer, numerous mutations had to occur to turn a once healthy cell into an existential threat. And the cells themselves were not incapable of noticing their changes and initiating apoptosis—a controlled self-destruct—before they became dangerous. However cancerous cells necessarily had to have at least one mutation preventing this from taking place.
In this particular case, the cancerous cells’ apoptotic mechanisms were intact, they were simply not being triggered. And even now, the cells were producing the protein to trigger a self-destruct, but there was a single mutation along the apoptotic protein causing it to fold improperly, disabling it. In essence, every single one of the cancerous cells were aware of the danger they posed and were frantically trying to kill themselves, however the metaphorical trapdoor beneath the noose was jammed shut.
If she could get an enzyme into the cancerous cells to repair the faulty apoptotic protein—to repair the trapdoor—then the cells would undergo apoptosis and be cleanly removed. And if it was inadvertently introduced into a healthy cell, nothing would happen; no faulty apoptotic protein, no cell death. The enzyme design would be rather straightforward so long as Yvette was careful for it to only target the faulty protein and break down on its own soon after.
Getting the enzyme into a cell shouldn’t be an issue either: viruses have been using capsids to get their genetic material into victim cells for eons. There was no reason she couldn’t do something similar to instead insert enzymes. It did make Yvette somewhat uneasy, manufacturing something even superficially resembling a virus, but she reminded herself that nothing she was making could self replicate, nor would it be going anywhere near the target cells’ genetic material.
With the payload and delivery method designed, Yvette ordered cells inside her body to start manufacturing the product. She conducted tests both on the cancerous cells and on the woman’s healthy tissue elsewhere in her body, all while under the gaze of Yvette’s mage sight.
As expected, the capsids injected their short lived payload into whatever cell they encountered. Healthy cells were completely unaffected, and the cancerous cells immediately went into apoptosis.
A grin tugged at the corner of Yvette’s mouth as with her flesh thread she burrowed into the tumor and flooded it with its doom.