“When you say that some people are Fever Touched, what exactly does that mean?” I said.

Roly and Trudy looked at each other for a moment before Roly spoke.

“It refers to people who survived the most severe phase of the illness and came back weakened by it,” he said.

“So not everyone who had it as a child, and subsequently recovered? Not Trudy, for example?” I said.

“Oh, no,” said Trudy. “I was sick and miserable but my life was never in danger.”

“So everyone who experienced the extreme fever and deep sleep phase either died or was permanently weakened?” I said.

“Yes,” said Roly.

“Only physically weakened,” said Trudy.

“I wouldn’t say there are no mental symptoms,” said Roly.

“Being traumatised by a near death experience is not a symptom,” said Trudy.

“A lot of traumatised people would object to being described as weakened by their experience,” said Amris. He had just returned with another heavy tome, this one with many bookmarks dangling from it. He glared at Roly until Roly broke eye contact and looked away.

There was a long and uncomfortable pause before Trudy spoke again. “Regardless of how we talk about the mental component,” she said. “It’s the physical component that leads to the diagnosis that someone is Fever Touched. There’s a specific and measurable change in the patients stats. They lose Exhaustion capacity, and in the most extreme cases Health capacity as well, and they gain Fatigue capacity. It’s common to see changes in some other stats too but it all adds up to them being less physical and more intellectual. We don’t know if the change is caused by the System revealing a change in the body or if this is the System imposing the change on the body.”

I interrupted her, “So stat changes can happen either way?”

She looked surprised for a tiny moment but then concealed it, “If you do a lot of heavy lifting and your strength stat goes up then you’ve changed your body and the System is taking notice of the change. If you unlock a perk and it makes your strength stat go up then the System is changing your body to reflect the perk.”

That felt weirdly invasive. Almost creepy. Like the hidden hand of the System was always there, ready to remake my body according to a will other than my own.

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I didn't say anything about how creeped out I was and after a moment Trudy went on.

“We also don’t know if the positive changes are caused by the Fever or if they’re caused by the body trying to compensate for the damage caused by the Fever.”

“So you don’t know for sure if the Fever changes the way that the body interacts with the Source?” I said.

“I wouldn’t put it like that,” said Roly.

“Me neither,” said Trudy, “but maybe we should?”

They fell into silence, presumably thinking. I took advantage of the break in conversation to look over the book that Amris had brought. It wasn’t as ancient or impressive as the Bestiary had been but it was still huge, old and richly illustrated. Amris poured himself another cup of tea and sat down next to me as I looked through it.

The book was called An Encyclopedia of Source Eaters. The Void Squid and the Robber Crabs were there but also a huge range of other beasts of all shapes and sizes. Everything from tiny fish that looked like remoras, to a now extinct species of Elephant considerably larger than any living species.

The tiny fish were called shield worms, in spite of not actually being worms, and affixed themselves onto ships that had Source shielded hulls, and damaged the shielding. Apparently they were enough of a problem to require regular cleaning stops for the ships.

The Elephants had been called Wandering Elephants, on account of the huge distances they travelled in search of food. They fed on Source rich plants like the Ez Radish and had died out mainly due to conflict with farmers.

I searched through the book looking for Source Eaters that lived in the Black Woods. Something that might have caused the scratches on the houses in Rotveil. I found a species of Sloth-Bear with long claws that it usually used for digging up Source-rich roots. It was usually timid and had so far avoided interactions with humans. This mainly seemed to be because the spicy flavour of the Ez Radish that humans loved so much had evolved to repel Sloth-Bears, who hated the sensation. The book suggested that one of the reasons for the apparent timidity of the Sloth-Bears around humans was that they associated us with the burning sensation of Ez Radish. They weren’t always timid though. They were known to use those huge claws for self defence if they were disturbed while eating.

Looking through the book for other Black Woods Source eaters I realised there were a lot of Source eaters in the sea. Most were opportunistic Source feeders rather than exclusive Source hunters like the Void Squid was presumed to be. I wondered if all of the sea creatures crowding around the SS Idyllic had been Source eaters. There was no way to be sure after all this time. Even if the Sailor was still around he was unlikely to remember exactly which creatures he’d seen. He probably hadn’t known for sure which animals he was looking at even at the time.

I felt as if I was close to understanding something about the Fever but my mind kept sliding off the idea. Maybe that was how the Fever hid itself from the mind’s eye? It wrapped itself in a frictionless coating of nope that the mind did not want to grab onto and then it would slip away the moment you weren’t paying attention to it. Of course if it had enough trauma attached to it then it would become too spikey to ever move through the mind unnoticed. Traumatic memories can’t help but catch on other thoughts and disrupt them. That’s why trauma is so exhausting. All these trains of thought that have to be rerouted around the traumatic memories. It makes everything take longer to deal with than it should.

I probably would have fallen into a deep spiral of thought if the bombing hadn’t started at that exact moment.