A familiar clamor of voices greeted him as he went into the Orphanage. There were 9 or 10 children at the orphanage at any given time, and quiet was rarely found.
He cuffed a brown haired boy, who was pulling a young girl’s braids, over the head as he raised his voice.
“Alright you lot, time to wash up for supper. Gather up, single file like I taught you!”
The children continued to laugh and scream in play even as they listened to him, forming into a line from youngest to oldest, with the youngest being closest to him.
The boy he’d cuffed stood towards the front, rubbing his head sullenly. “You didn’t have t’ hit me,” he muttered.
Raivo gave him a stern look. “And you didn’t have to pull on Lorelei’s hair, Alexander. If you don’t want to be hit, don’t hit others.”
Lorelei, who stood even closer to the front than Alexander, sniffed. “You’re lucky it were Raivo who sawed you. You know Sister Agnes woulda beated you.”
Alexander flinched at the thought. Raivo couldn’t help feeling a bit of sympathy for the boy as he’d been on the receiving end of one of Agnes’ beatings more than once as a boy himself. The Sister had a firm hand, controlled so not to bruise or injure, but still painful. He had thought to himself, more than once, that she might have missed her calling as a Sister of the Church of Righteous Anger, but then he supposed that no one in the Church of Righteous Anger would operate an Orphanage.
In fact he couldn’t think of any member of that church that didn’t end up joining one of the orders of the Odunian Templars.
He ushered the children into the washroom and watched as they took turns to make sure they properly scrubbed their hands. He paid special attention to Alexander and forced the boy to scrub at his nails when he made to stop after a quick, low-effort scrub. The boy grumbled, but he listened and soon all had washed up and sat around the large table lined with wood benches on each side.
Raivo, as the oldest, sat at the head of one end of the table, Sister Agnes the other. She led them in a prayer thanking the Benevolent for their continued health and food, and then they dug into the food to eat. One of the rare moments of silence in the Orphanage arrived as the hungry children mouths were too occupied with eating to speak.
The Orphanage didn’t have the best food, none of the spiritual beast meat nor spiritual plants that Dewett claimed the Nobility ate in his stories, but then none save the son of the Town Castellan would eat such things. What it lacked in quality though, it made up for in quantity. None of the orphans went hungry, though even after all this time he still wasn’t sure how the Sister could afford so much food. He knew her church gave her a stipend to run the orphanage, but surely it couldn’t be as much as that.
It was just one of the many mysteries that surrounded the strong, beautiful nun. He’d given up on trying to see through her a long time ago.
Raivo’s face darkened at the thought of the son of the Town Castellan, and an acrid, unpleasant smell from his memory seemed to fill his nostrils for a breath moment. He choked likely on the food, and Sister Agnes looked at him in concern.
“Do the scars make it hard to eat?”
He shrugged. “No, they’re a bit sore, but otherwise well healed.”
She accepted his word, but still eyed him in concern.
“I wish you’d tell me who did it. It’s no small matter to so injure someone. The Church still has some influence in the matters of this town.”
Raivo’s face burned with shame, and the scars seemed to ache.
“Leave it, Sister.”
His voice was harsher than he meant it to be and she raised an eyebrow.
“Pride is a common failing among men.” She said pointedly.
He resisted the urge to snort.
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“What is there for a Plague-Touched to be proud of?” He regretted the words as they came out of his mouth.
Sister Agnes’ fist slammed the table, causing a clatter of dishes, and the children all looked up in surprise.
“Do not use that term at this table.”
The tension in her body belied the quiet of her voice.
Raivo avoided her gaze and remained quiet.
Alexander, sitting near him, surprised Raivo by speaking up.
“It ain’t like not saying it will change what others folks say.” The boy said defiantly.
“Letting other people determine how you view yourself is a thing of the weak-willed.” Agnes told the boy, but didn’t move her gaze from Raivo.
Raivo flushed again but raised his eyes back to hers.
“Your pardon Sister. I should know better.”
She held his gaze another moment before nodding.
“To speak a thing, even a lie, is to give it power. Fate has not dealt you an easy hand, Raivo, nor any of those at this table, but to train your will is to seek the power to defy fate. The gods showed us that it was possible when they ascended from the mortal realm to the heavens.”
Raivo held back a bitter retort and merely nodded.
Quiet returned, broken only by the sound of forks on plates as the children finished supper.
Raivo sent the children off to scrub their faces before sleep, handing the task of watching Alexander to Bran, the second oldest of the orphans, a mere three years younger than Raivo himself.
He stayed behind to help the sister clean up.
They washed dishes in the kitchen using wash water fetched from the well in the yard.
Before they had finished, Agnes turned to him.
“Raivo...I know life hasn’t been easy for you. Even among the orphans, you’ve been dealt a tough hand. But I meant what I said. There is an opportunity hidden in every trial. If you can overcome it, then your fate will be yours to make.”
She seemed like she wanted to say more, but just sighed, patting his shoulder after she dried her hands, and going to see to the children.
His grip tightened on the plate he was washing, knuckles turning white.
It was easy for her to talk of hidden opportunities and defying the fates, but reality was crueler than that. Will training, reaching the later Aural Realms, developing one’s Aural Essence, even the stories of ascension to godhood; what did any of them matter to a Plague-Touched?
He closed his eyes and probed at his Soul Well.
Before he’d grown sick he’d begun Excavation of his Well, enough that he did have a store of will that he could access, albeit a small one. He focused and Projected and fire burst in front of him, evaporating some of the wash water.
However, he quickly ran out of will. He set the plate down carefully as he resisted the urge to hurl it across the room in frustration.
“What good can this trial possibly do me?”
His eyes burned with tears as he let this resentful thought pass his lips with whispered fury.
With familiar dread he gathered his meager, regenerating will into the shape of a spade and hurled it at the shallow surface of his Well. Yet no matter how he strived against he could only make the slightest of chips on the surface of his Soul.
The Soul Plague was an insidious disease. The like had never been seen before in the Kingdom of Siniel. According to Dewett, it had affected a much greater area than that, possibly even the entire continent of Odunn. No one could seem to stop the spread, resorting to draconian measures of imposed isolation enforced by the Templar, burning of villages and bodies, doing anything and everything to curtail the plague. While eventually successful, most were haunted by those times and still looked on the Plague-Touched with suspicion, as though they might bring about a second coming of the Soul Plague.
Of those who contracted it, most died. Even the benefits of longevity and improved physical quality brought on by reaching the higher Aural Realms didn’t save those who contracted the plague. Those who survived seemed to have been ordained by fate, as no amount of healing or other efforts seemed to have an effect on survival rates.
Yet even among the survivors, the plague still left its mark: their Souls were hardened to a point that even the most advanced Soulscouring techniques couldn’t achieve. Advancement through the Aural Realms became extremely difficult.
For those in the advanced realms who had survived, there were at least some benefits as it allowed them to refine their will quality by honing it like a blade on a whetstone in their efforts to Excavate, for the majority of those who survived it was a curse.
There was even rumor, substantiated through Dewett’s comments to Raivo, that the plague was so traumatic to the soul that it often resulted in Essence evolutions. Advancing an Essence Tier was an evolution on an entirely different scale than advancing Aural Realms, and the higher the tier the greater the ability to cross Realms. Even excavation became easier.
According to Dewett, those who were fortunate enough to evolve their Essence to a higher tier were like birds that had taken to the sky for the first time, advancing to heights that allowed them to stand on a peak much higher than a third-rate kingdom like Siniel.
Yet to the rare survivors among the young, it was more curse than boon. They had not managed to Excavate enough prior to taking ill to have enough will to make any significant progress through the Aural Realms.
They’d been handed a trial that, even to those in the peak of the Mortal Realm, was difficult to surmount.