Mela sees her apprentice, Eloise, without her escort of Gurion and folding bandages. “Sister Eloise, have you seen Brother-Healer Barth?”

Eloise finished the bandage in her hand. “No, Mother-Sister, I have not seen him or his apprentices. He could have headed to the quarantine area already.”

Mela ponders on this; her instructions were to move the ill to the tents, not to enter the condemned area. In the tents, they could control the spread of the plague.

“I will be having words with Barth! I am heading over there. Please finish setting up quickly as Barth might require medical attention once I get my hands on him!”

With all her effort, Eloise tried not to laugh. Mela has a gentle soul and could not even harm a fly. To even think she would do anything was hilarious to the community. Only her husband, Jara, had the nerve to laugh in Mela’s face with her ‘violent’ statements.

Eloise asks. “Did you want me to come with you, Mother-sister?”

Mela waves her off and starts to move towards the quarantine zone. Eloise understands that she doesn’t want more healers at risk because of the small rogue group.

As Mela walks through the streets of Omri, she can see that the residence is a hard push due to this illness. She stops and looks at some of the children that cross her path. Most flinch at her touch and run away. This nearly brings tears to Mela’s eyes, seeing so many in pain and destitute.

The closer she is arriving in the apparent quarantine zone, the evident lack of sewage and essential water treatment. It is strange being in a city far from the Core. So many marvellous devices to make everyday living easier. From the look, they don’t even have peat as their street lighting. Also, they have only paved the wealthier parts of the city too. The streams of rubbish and sewage are apparent why the illness has spread to these levels. Mela has noted that she will speak to this Marquess after her group removes the threat of this plague. If they update some basic hygiene, then these outbreaks would lessen.

Mela approaches the barricaded area. Four guards are there between two barriers. Each militiaman is armed with a spear and a repeater crossbow at the side. As she comes, one notice. Two moves forward with spears ready, and the other two draw the crossbows.

One calls out. “Halt! You approach the Quarantine zone. If you do not stop, we will be forced to fire!”

Mela put her hands in the air and called out. “Please, I am here to help. I have some of my colleagues in the quarantine zone already.”

The soldiers stop and look at each other. Then, finally, the ‘officer’ turns back and replies. “There has been no one who has passed this checkpoint. Do you have papers to prove you are a medical doctor?”

“Yes, and a document stating that we have permission to be here as well.”

Mela pulls out a scroll canister and pulls the two letters, and hands it to the guard. The guard pulls out a set of half-moon glasses and set to task reading the letters.

After a few moments, he looks up and says. “I’m sorry for the miss understanding. I am Corporal Higgins. Open the barricade.” He set aside his spear and bows towards Mela. “I didn’t realise a Master Doctor was going to be sent. We are desperate to be saved from this sickness.”

“That is alright, my son. But, unfortunately, sickness creates fear, and we mortals succumb to our base instincts.”

As Mela moves through, she nods at each one. “How many checkpoints are there?”

Higgins answers. “There are four major streets, with checkpoints all small exits have been blocked with 3 metre stone walls with glass sticking out of the mortar.”

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“That seems to be a bit barbaric. Was it the Marquess who ordered this?”

“No, it was the previous mayor trying to subjugate the poor side of town fifteen years ago. Only the barricades are new.”

“I might want to have a chat with your ex-mayor after my visit here; money could have been used to creating basic sanitation for your city. This illness would have been dramatically different if he had. Pity.”

Mela knew it wasn’t the fault of the Corporal for these draconic class subjections. He could have come from a poor area and now watching his family die because he has a duty to the rest of the city. The smell of this area is horrid; Mela wondered to herself what would have happened if they put a little bit of care for their fellow Favinonians?

As she turned into the central part of this area. The sight of the quarantine area brought tears of anger to Mela. So this is the poor district. They must have gathered the sick and nailed up every exit. Each door and window has been boarded up with no gaps. How are they supposed to eat? Or even have fresh water. Some wouldn’t have been sick, just in the wrong area at the wrong time.

From the smell, most people in these death traps are already dead. You can save the living but pray for the dead. Her old ma used to say that to her, even if Mela didn’t quite understand what prayer was. The access of the research and her husband, her faith in something larger than herself became part of her life.

Suppose they knew that lumping these dead together with the open sewage could cause huge issues to the water supply to the city. They need to block the water flow to contain the infection in one area.

Mela turns another corner in the warren of houses and hovels. She spies her group of healers attacking a building with a crowbar and hammers. There is Barth, looking over some victims of this sickness.

“Barth, didn’t I tell you not to come in here until we had a status report from the healers of this town?”

With a mask on, only his aqua frizzy hair, long pointed ears, and height gave away that he was a gnome. Not even looking her way, he calmly says. “Yes, you are right, but I wanted to see with my own eyes on the incompetence of this town’s so call healers. Look at this, sewage mixing with groundwater...” He shuffles over to a building. “… Look at this, the dead have liquified. Clean up crews need to be assigned to this area, or the next outbreak will be worse than this one.”

If Mela didn’t already notice this when she was coming in, it would really shock her. “We are here to help, not to fix every issue and to limit the spread of the illness. So, what have you been doing here?”

“We found some people alive inside; this will give us the best example of the illness in full effect. It is strange today that they trap people inside of a building.”

Mela ponders over what Barth said as she hears the last crack of the wooden beams being pounded on by Barth’s assistants. A large man crashes through the last of the wood barrier. His body covered in pustules, and his eyes red with madness. He grabs one of the assistants and embraces him with several of the boils bursting to let off a pungent smell.

Mela was shocked as more people poured through the gap. They look like they will attack anyone until one looks and points right at Mela. “The light is there. Our Lord commands your death!”

Barth moves in front of Mela without thinking, which seemed to be a comical sight as he barely reaches her waist. Wielding a crowbar too big for his tiny frame. He yells at Mela. “Mother, run!”

Barth and his assistants block the rabid people, and Mela’s stands there too stunned to move...