I formed my first seal some three months after manifesting my Wiser powers, unconsciously summoning a light when my candle ran out during a late night study session. I vaguely remember staring at the light, realizing what I had just become. Still I kept the secret to myself.

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The smell that filled her nostrils was the first thing Yara noticed as she entered the Healers’ tent. It smelled… clean. The tent was huge, housing some thirty large tables that were arranged in an orderly fashion. At each table, one man or woman wearing dark blue robes was waiting. Other stood at the edge of the tent, seemingly doing nothing. All were watching the participants who had just entered.

The man who stood at the table closest to them approached. He was a rather large man, albeit not nearly as large as her father. On his shoulders, several patches were sown onto his robes. He had a warm smile.

“Welcome everyone,” he began with a loud voice. “Welcome to the Healing and Sealing trials. I am Kaleigh Byrg, First Healer of Ters and overseer for the Testing here today. In a moment, I will assign each of you to a table and Healer. You are to follow their instructions and stay with them until you are either dismissed or approved.”

A servant hurried over and handed Kaleigh a list with all their names. One by one, the Healer went over the names and assigned them to their tables. Then her name came.

“Yara Tholsson,” he said as they neared the bottom of the list. “Table twelve, you’re with Johnna Leising.”

Yara nodded and made for the assigned table. Vaguely, she thought she recognized the woman from the inn earlier this morning. Johnna gave her an encouraging smile as she approached. If she had recognized Yara, she gave no note of it. Three other participants, two men and a women, stood at the same table. They looked as nervous as Yara felt.

Outside, the cheers of the crowd grew louder. I wonder if Samos is fighting already, she thought absently.

“Now that we are complete,” Johnna began. “Let’s go over the proceedings of the trial. Once the first fights are over, the participants of the Enhancement trials will make their way into the tent for any Healing that might be required. We’re table twelve, so we have a good chance of getting someone immediately from the first round.

“Once we have our patient here, I will tell you the process I’m going through in order to fully heal any injuries they might have sustained. If we’re lucky, we’ll get some good visual wounds like a cut or broken arm.”

Some luck, Yara considered.

The flap giving access to the arena opened and a group of men and women walked in looking miserable. Many had visible signs of injury, either holding their wrists or having a slight limp in their step. The first bunch of failed participants for the Enhancement test trials.

Kaleigh, the First Healer, welcomed them as they entered and send them on to the first set of tables to receive Healing. The twelfth one to be given a table was send towards Yara’s spot. He was holding his wrist with his other hand, no doubt it was either severely bruised or broken.

Johnna greeted the boy with a warm compassionate voice, asking for his name and how his trial had gone. As Yara had suspected, the boy had failed and had suffered a broken wrist. The Healer instructed him to lay on the table and relax. She turned towards Yara and the other three at the table.

“I will now do a delving into his injury to assess the damage,” she explained. “Once I have a clear picture of what exactly is broken, I will start the process for Healing. For now, I just want you to watch and follow along.”

She took the wrist in her hands and closed her eyes. Silence befell her and nothing seemed to happen. Yara looked at the other participants, who seemed as confused as she was.

“I’ve now assessed the damage,” Johnna suddenly said as she opened her eyes and turned towards them. “I’ll now start healing the injury.”

She closed her eyes again.

Once again, nothing seemed to happen. Yara had expected at least some visual indication that something was being done. Only the boy’s face, who seemed to relax and feel better with every passing second, gave her a hint that he was actually being healed.

Strange, Yara thought, she still has her eyes closed. Doesn’t she need to look at the injury?

Imitating Johnna, she closed her eyes as well and tried looking at the boy’s wrist. At first, she saw nothing but darkness when suddenly something formed in the void before her.

A small white dot appeared before her, roughly where the wrist of the boy should be. It expanded and formed a line. Then two lines. Then three. Before long, the ever expanding lines were taking shape, forming the outline of a hand and arm. Could this be the arm of the boy?

Looking at the arm, she noticed some of the lines connecting the hand with the arm were broken. One by one, they were being put back together by an unseen force, as if invisible hands were tying them together.

Instinctively, she tried reaching for the broken lines in an attempt to fix them. She didn’t know if she was using her hands to reach for the lines or if she was simply thinking of it, but somehow she felt like she could reach for and grab them.

An invisible barrier stopped her. No matter how hard she pushed, she could not reach the broken lines. Yara tried breaking through the invisible barrier with force, but to no avail.

What force am I using? She wondered. My body isn’t moving yet I feel like I’m trying to reach through this barrier.

Breaking it didn’t work.

How can I break something that isn’t even there?

But it was there, she could feel it stopping her. What was it?

Sudden, more lines appeared in front of her in the place where the invisible barrier had been, surrounding the arm in full. The lines looked similar to the ones on the arm, but somehow Yara knew they were different altogether.

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Carefully, she reached for the lines of the barrier. If she could not break it, maybe she might be able to pick it apart. She took hold of it and tugged. It fell apart in a heartbeat, the entire barrier fading into nothingness.

Finally, she thought satisfied as she once again tried reaching for the broken lines on the arm. Nearly all had been repaired in the time it had taken her to discard the barrier, but a few remained for her to prod on. She grabbed two ends of what she assumed to be the same original line.

“That’s quite enough, Yara,” a voice suddenly came out of nowhere and she snapped back to reality.

One of the men who had been standing at the tent’s edge had joined their table. He looked old with greyed out hair and a wrinkled face, but nevertheless seemed energetic. He was dressed in plain and common clothing yet somehow seemed important.

“Well, well, well,” he said and Yara matched the voice with the one she had heard just earlier. “Isn’t this quite the surprise so early in the trials.”

Yara looked around confused. Her co-participants seemed as confused as she was, but Johnna watched her with… pride?

“I’m… eh…” she stumbled over her words. “I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” the man responded. “No need to worry, you didn’t do nothing wrong. The exact opposite really. Johnna, would you do the honours?” He turned to Johnna.

“Of course,” she beamed. “Well, Yara, you came in here to be tested on Healing right?”

She nodded.

“Well, congratulations. Because as it turns out, you have the Talent.”

It took a second for the news to sink in, but once she realized she was able to leave Ters, leave the inn, she started feeling warm inside.

“And what’s even better,” Johnna continued. “And which is also the reason Sealer Yoren is standing here next to us, as it turns out you just manifested your Talent for Sealing as well.”

“I have two talents?” Yara asked not knowing what to think of that.

“Indeed you have, young lady,” the man called Yoren confirmed. “This only happens once or twice every ten years and now we have it happen on the first trial of the day.”

Yara was still confused as they both stared at her, the other three participants completely forgotten. “I’m still not sure what you mean by that,” she responded.

“It means you have a bright future ahead,” Johnna answered. “What you have happens only once or twice every decade as Yoren said. You will be trained at Eresath in the talents of Healing and Sealing and become a Dovra’Sha. People from all over the realm will seek you out for guidance and tutoring once you have been properly trained.”

She let that information sink in. All her life she had been trained by her parents to tend to the inn with the prospect of one day taking over. And now all that had been thrown aside. She would be able to leave it all behind and do something meaningful with her life.

Johnna’s voice interrupted her train of thoughts. “I’d like you to stay by my side as we continue through the day, Yara. This is the first time I discover someone with the potential of a Dovra’Sha and I’m curious to see how you evolve in a short time period."

Yara was desperate to learn more now and preferable as soon as possible, so she agreed with the proposition.

As the rounds of the Enhancement trials progressed, more and more wounded participants made their way into the tent and leaving once healed. Yara observed without intruding on the process as Johnna had instructed, watching the lines being put back together.

The three other participants with her, Crean, Torrel and Veara they were called, seemed unsuccessful so far in manifesting either Talent. The other tables in the tent had varying success. At one table, all four participants turned out to have the Talent to become a Healer, while at many others not a single person had any luck. Of the over hundred participants, Yara estimated that only some eight people in total had manifested a Talent, be it Healer or Sealer. She was the only one with both.

“Sixth group is coming in,” First Healer Kaleigh called out as another batch of beaten and bruised men and women walked inside. Yara’s stomach made a little jump as she recognized Samos coming in. He was holding his wrist with a grimace.

Kaleigh was assigning the victims to their tables and to Yara’s surprise, Samos was assigned to her table. Before Johnna could welcome him, she approached him.

“Well hello there, master Samos.” she smiled.

“Yara,” he responded sheepishly when he noticed her. He then looked behind her. “And Master Leising,” he continued greeting the Healer waiting at the table.

“You two know each other?” Johnna inquired curiously.

“Sort of,” Yara answered. “We only met yesterday.”

Johnna seemed content with that. “Good, that’s really good. Healing always goes smoother when you have some connection with the patient. Why don’t you do the delving this time, Yara?”

She nodded, surprised by the level of confidence the Healer put in her. She guided Samos to the table, let him sit down and took his wrist in her hands. He seemed to look at her in surprise. That’s right, she thought boastingly. I’m going to be a Healer.

Closing her eyes, Yara started to focus on the wrist just as Johnna had been doing the previous times. In a few seconds, it was going faster each time, she started seeing the lines she now recognized.

The lines were not broken this time, but instead were rather frail as if they could break at any time. No doubt she could strengthen them if she tried, but that had not been Johnna’s instructions.

“The wrist isn’t broken,” she said while opening her eyes. “But it has taken quite some damage.”

“Very good,” Johnna responded with a satisfied look on her face. “Try healing it.”

Yara hesitated. “Are you sure, master Leising?” The Healer had made her clear she was now a student of hers and should be addressed properly.

“Go ahead. Don’t worry, you won’t hurt him. You’ll see soon enough.” Something about her smile told Yara she was hiding a piece of crucial information.

Shrugging of her doubts, Yara once again closed her eyes and delved into the wrist. The frail lines reappeared and she reached for them. To her surprise, she could not reach them no matter how hard she tried. Another invisible barrier? Just like she had done with the first patient, she tried finding the barrier in order to tear it apart.

However this time, nothing appeared. There was something holding her back, something that wasn’t there yet denied her access to Samos’ wrist.

“I can’t reach it,” she sighed, opening her eyes. She expected Johnna to be disappointed not having lived up to her expectations. Johnna however was once again smiling.

“And neither can I,” she replied. “And there’s a very simple reason for that.” She turned to Samos, who had been following the entire process meekly. “Tell me Samos, how did your Enhancement trial go?”

“I passed,” Samos responded. “Master Greis told me I manifested my Enhancement Talent.”

Yara knocked him on the head. “And why didn’t you tell me that first, you idiot?”

“You didn’t ask,” came his answer, cheeks flustering red.

“Idiot,” she sighed. “Well, at least it means we’ll be traveling to Eresath together.”

He smiled at that. “I figured as much. So you’re going to be a Healer then?”

“Among other things,” she said with a sly smile.

Johnna interrupted them before Samos could inquire what she meant by that. “So do you now know why you can’t heal Samos, Yara?”

Almost forgotten what had happened, Yara reflected on the experience and had to admit she had no idea.

“What about you, Samos?” Johnna asked. “Master Aëron told me you have some clue what the Talents are about from your time in South Harbour.”

Samos hesitated, scratching his temple. “I’m not entirely sure,” he began, “but I recall reading a passage stating you can’t affect people who have manifested their own Talent.”

Johnna seemed impressed. “Correct indeed. The very first Law of Talents states that it is impossible to use your powers on someone who has manifested a Talent, no matter which one.” As she was explaining, Johnna took out a vial with ointment. “Which means that Healers cannot heal Enhancers who get hurt on the battle field. Fortunately, we have somewhat of a solution to that.” She held up the vial.

“This is an ointment that contains traces of crushed Makran leaves which have healing properties. Since this is a rather rare substance and your injury will heal in a matter of days if not hours, I will not use it on you.” She stashed the vial back from where it came from. “But as a Healer who travels a lot, it’s always good to have one of these at the ready.”

She sounds as if giving a lecture, Yara realized. And truth be told, she probably was.

Johnna dismissed of Samos, congratulating him on manifesting his Talent. Yara said her goodbyes and he left, no doubt she would see him again soon.