Somewhere on Issria river, fourteenth day of second moon of winter, 789 Imperial calendar.
Mistakes were made. It rang inside his mind long after he sent his guest away back to her cabin. As difficult as it came to him, he found no malice in her words. Acting on false assumptions, she and her people slaughtered four villages before they realized their mistake.
Varea gave no excuse for their actions. Her people suffered. They blamed humans and humans were punished. Poor judgment on their part.
His hands trembled as his icy fingers tried to hold his fox fur about his frame. Gods, it felt like Sogu all over again. Someone in a village coughed and by the end of a day an angry mob slaughtered entire families. People fear what they cannot explain.
Farrow’s mind recalled the screams he every day and night. Victims burned alive. They had no way to distinguish between sick and healthy. If someone in the family got sick, they locked everyone onside their house and burned the building to the ground.
“I beg you. Please reconsider.”
His guest’s voice pulled him back out of his memories. She had threatened him. She bargained with him. She even tried to kidnap him and when that failed, she fell to his feet on this snow-covered deck and begged him. So many miles she came looking for a cure for her people. So many obstacles she crossed on her way.
Somebody in the previous town he passed pretended to be him. He trapped her and tried to use for whatever experiments he pleased. For an alchemist, a body like hers was akin to a treasure-trove. A miracle she even escaped from his hold.
“Please.”
She kept her forehead pressed against his feet. Her dripping tears turning to ice.
“Enough. Stop. You are asking for impossible. I made that cure with a human body in mind. I have no knowledge of your kin. I know not what is good or harmful for your people. Herbs I consider medicinal, or their combination may be nothing more than a poison to you.”
“Then learn! Use my body, cut my flesh and learn what you need! Test your herbs on me! If nothing else, come to my lands and speak with our scholars! Learn from them the knowledge you lack! Teach them what you know of the disease!”
Why should I? The thought crossed his mind but could not exit his lips.
Out on the horizon, blue costal line and light of the Fagora’s lighthouse marked the first crossroad of his journey.
“Please.”
Perhaps this was his punishment? To relive the horrors of that plague once more.
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What if this wasn’t sogu fever but something new? Something even more sinister? Sogu most often than not spared those with strong body and quick recovery. How can it affect people with such insane vitality like hers?
What if this was something new? What if it would spread? Oh gods.
If it indeed wasn’t sogu fever but something new, the slaughter they made might have stopped its initial spread amongst humans. Nothing in that cure he devised would cause internal bleeding. Plus, the antidotes he gave her contained ten out of fifteen herbs used to distil the cure.
It cannot be…
His hands lost their grip letting the lush fox fur drop onto the ice-covered deck.
What if his cure did not cause the bleeding? What if that was only a symptom of what was to come? Among its components, his potion contained a mixture of herbs that boosted regeneration and, as a result, the rate at which a body produced its new building blocks.
Oh gods.
Few knew this, but a body was in a sese build like a house with myriads of tiny little bricks. No. A house was not a proper comparison. A living body is more like a country with many districts, roads, aqueducts and its people. Tiny little things that move within every living creature. Its workers and defenders.
Farrow still held a vivid memory of the day when one of his old friends showed him those tiny creatures living within a drop of his own blood.
He remembered the same device showing him the nature of the enemy he fought with. The wiggly thing with its long spike that attacked the many workers of the patient’s body and destroyed its living bricks.
What if the potion he made no longer affected those sogu creatures they found in that stream? What if instead of killing those creatures, it now had an effect of strengthening them as it did with the body itself? What if it made the creatures multiply faster?
Oh gods… his cure… people were told to drink it whenever… each town had a supply…
“Oh gods…”
Their eyes met as he came to realize the danger.
“You, were you sick? Did you ever had any contact with infected?”
“No. That was not allowed. Why do you ask?”
Frantic, fighting with his frozen fingers, Farrow found the vial inside his robe. His cure. He always had a dose ready.
“That potion…”
She recognized the smell and the greenish hue of the cure.
“How soon did the side effects appear after taking the cure?”
“Same day. Sometimes within minutes of drinking it.”
“That’s impossible. My cure was meant to be taken over several days. No less than five. The improvement appeared on average from fourth day in children and about ninth day in adults and elders. Even accounting for your kin greater regeneration, it would take at least a day for the body begin its recovery.
“Then would you explain the initial improvements?”
“That you cannot see a person standing behind a veil does not mean that someone cannot be there. The potion I made acts in many ways to lessen the strain on the body and reduce the pain. It was meant to calm the infected to ease in their care. The improvement you claim could never been there. The cure masked all symptoms while it strengthened the disease.”
“That cannot be! Unless…”
Varea’s eyes widened. A different disease. They were wrong all this time. They searched in all the wrong places.
“A simple way to test it.”
Farrow handed her the vial with the cure he made.
“Drink, if what I fear is true, nothing will happen.”
“And what if you’re wrong?”
“Then you may risk death while I will have a chance to study the effects of my cure on your kin and try to counter it.”
“Whatever the result, do you swear to help my people?”
“On my life, I do.”
She took the vial in her hand but did not drink it.
“Human, do you have any parchments? I have much to prepare in case all this goes wrong.”