Time ago we had already visited the Valley of Celso. It was during spring, a time when plants bloomed, and anafloras floated through the air, spreading their spores. I thought about moving to the center of the valley, near a beautiful lake, but I remembered that material teleportation emitted enough energy to attract dangerous beasts. Spring had ended long ago, and creature activity shouldn't be as intense as it was during that time, but I didn't want to take any risks. I searched my mind for a more remote area from the nesting grounds, imagined us appearing directly there, and then we disappeared in a burst of light.

If one were to ask Usshyer who had experienced teleportation what it feels like, the resulting descriptions would be very different. The effects of teleportation depend on both the skill of the one performing it and the resistance of those undergoing it. For me—with my limited skill but decent resistance—it caused severe headaches that blurred my vision for a few seconds. For my master, with his low Shyvian resistance, it must have caused severe pain and a significant loss of his senses. However, he barely blinked for a few seconds before continuing as if nothing had happened.

—Are you okay? —I used to ask him as soon as my vision recovered.

—I'm fine —was all he said.

Our Motheros also experienced a jolt, but their high Shyvian resistance prevented them from going mad like other creatures. We took a few seconds to calm them completely and continued.

We had arrived on the outskirts of the Valley of Celso, just as I had wished. The storm continued to advance southwest, although from that place it no longer seemed so threatening. Norus's second moon shone brightly with its spectral light through gray clouds on the horizon over the sea. The night still prevailed, and a light rain continued to pester us. We galloped along the valley's border until we found a small arm of the Pocuán River, then descended the slope, and my master took the lead. The undergrowth remained low, hiding only harmless mammals whose presence we could sense by the movement of plants. Apart from hunting eagles—who took flight very early—and mimetic monsters camouflaging in the background, there were not many other dangers in the valley during that time of year.

My master took out the Life Link from his nolet and began pointing it in different directions to pick up Caisam's signal. Nerves and impatience were consuming me alive, but nothing could calm me as much as my master's passivity. No matter what dangers were lurking behind us, he never seemed concerned. That day was no exception. If anyone had seen him galloping, they would never have imagined he was on the trail of a dying man. We moved according to the Life Link's instructions, circling the bottomless pits scattered everywhere or the nests of some amphibious beasts that slept during the hurricane season, until my master stopped to see the spectral rays of the only visible moon peeking through a passing cloud between the Elker mountains, right over the sea.

—Five minutes until dawn —he murmured and then addressed me aloud—. We have an hour until it's too late. It will be enough. Just stay alert with your energy vision for any sign of Caisam or Irene.

I closed my eyes to better perceive the energy in the environment. Every piece of matter contained shpabisshys, and almost everything shone in various colors according to its energy level. The vegetation had a very soft blue tone that blended with the rest of things, while the earth and trees had a more muted tone. The sky was gray, and the animals, on the other hand, shone in colors ranging from red, through green to blue, depending on their power level. I could see the aura of small creatures, reddish and misty, while that of some lurking beasts, like fanged felines in the trees, glowed in shades of green and some blues.

It didn't take long for an orange light to emerge in the distance and split into two as we approached it. I informed my master, he stored the Link in his nolet, and let me lead him to the origin of those energy traces.

Soon we reached a plain where we could see a strange construction in the distance. It seemed to be a hut made of brittle wood, broken in some parts, pierced in others. An irregular mass of stones covered a portion of the house as a makeshift wall, but it didn't seem to be an integral part of the construction; rather, it was an improvised reinforcement to prevent the rest of the materials from falling. In short, it was a very precarious cabin built by an Usshyer who barely knew the basics of restructuring.

My master stopped nearby to examine something. There he left his Motheros, and I left mine. He walked aimlessly and then bent over the ground, which didn't seem very different to me from any other place. He pointed out some footprints that I wouldn't have recognized on my own and carefully stuck a finger into the mud, probing the depth of the prints.

—Someone dragged a body of almost a hundred kilos towards the cabin —he said, then began pointing to areas of the ground as he spoke—. A woman carrying a man. The woman stopped here to rest, she weighs about sixty kilos. On the side, you can see the mark where the man's body lay, who weighs about a hundred kilos.

I confirmed with my energy vision that there were two presences inside that cabin. One of them was red, the other tended towards orange. Both energy footprints had already clarified into the shape of two human silhouettes, one lying on the floor, and the other kneeling beside. The aura of the former was pale and flickering, while that of the latter was faint but lacked afflictions that I could recognize beyond tiredness.

We entered through the only door, and the kneeling young lady reacted violently. First, she attacked us with a fire burst that I could barely absorb with the palm of my hand, then she launched furiously at my master. I'm sure she would have managed to hurt him if he weren't so weak. He took her wrists in the air and diverted her body to the side, then used that momentum to gently sit her on the floor. I don't know if it was my master's surprisingly gentle response to the brutal attack, but the girl calmed down immediately.

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—Are you okay? —my master asked without delay.

A couple of will-o'-wisps on the ceiling were illuminating that place. They had paled before Irene's action, but I strengthened them to improve our vision.

On the floor lay a robust, ruddy young man with slightly bushy eyebrows. Under other circumstances, he might have been the vivid image of youth, as energetic as audacious, as attractive as Briseida had described him. But at that moment, he was in the grip of an illness that had paled his skin and made every muscle tremble. He wore a heavy hunter's coat, fine as could be, but it was in a terrible state from some fight. The most alarming element of his appearance was a tear that went from his shoulder to his waist, small but deep, reddened and so toxic that it had turned the folds of his skin to a purplish hue. Even an innocent child would have sensed that Caisam was under the effects of something horrible that was consuming his life. Irene was a chestnut-haired young lady as beautiful as her mother, healthy as far as could be seen, but visibly worn out by the terrible concern for her lover. Her aura was also weak. Her eyes were moist, and she had torn her clothes to make some makeshift bandages for Caisam's wound. She looked like a beast when we first saw her, but she relaxed completely when she understood that we were there to help. Now she looked at us with eyes about to burst into tears.

—It's a curse —Irene said—. That thing cursed him.

—You'll have to be more specific —my master said as he approached the dying Caisam.

—It was something big —she hesitated—. it was a bird, it attacked us near the lake.

She spoke of the lake where the river, whose branch we followed to descend into the valley, flowed, a place located two kilometers away. Irene continued trying to describe the beast that had starred in their misfortune but only mumbled some vague characteristics before nerves took possession of her body again. She took a breath, then tried to start over to tell us her story. She managed to speak slowly and without pauses; memory and nerves made her stumble more than once, but her story was clear.

What happened was this: they fled the city, first heading to the Elker lake simulating a night couple's trip, then traveling north to cross the Valley of Celso, thus avoiding any traveler recognizing them on the main road. Four days after they started their journey, when they calculated that efforts to find them would be focused elsewhere, they would go out to the Grand Galer Avenue to take transportation to Cassinger. However, they were attacked near the lake in the valley by a bird-like beast; Caisam defended Irene but got injured. They returned to their previous refuge for him to recover, but they were alarmed to realize that his body wasn't regenerating, and it seemed to worsen every moment.

Caisam was the one with the best knowledge of restructuring. Irene, on the other hand, had only intermediate knowledge of healing. She could control many mortal wounds, but the poison attacking Caisam was beyond her capabilities.

The young man's condition had worsened after a few hours. She had tried to reverse his deplorable state with numerous procedures, subjecting herself in the process to stress that had almost drained all her energy.

My master listened to Irene while meticulously examining Caisam's vital signs, his eyes, his mouth, and the wounds on his body.

—Did it have scales or feathers? —he asked while burying two fingers on the side of Caisam's neck to check his pulse.

Irene hesitated. She said the creature had scales, but they didn't seem reptilian, more like fish scales. It had the beak of a bird and limbs corresponding to its wings, although it didn't seem like it could fly. She apologized visibly distressed by her inability to describe the beast and repeated that it was very strange.

My master and I exchanged glances. We knew what it was. It was an Argatroz —or water bird—a formidable beast that my master had trouble classifying within the animal kingdom. It was a skinny crustacean with a bird's beak and bulging eyes that gave it a lunatic appearance, accentuated by its clumsy walk. It looked like a dying spider if you saw it walk from a distance, but it resembled a feline when it ran towards you with aggressive intentions. We had heard some zoology enthusiasts say that they were beautiful beasts; even some hunters declared the same, but they definitely referred to their unusually existence, not their exotic appearance. It was a horrible beast that lurked during the time frames when the sun and the moon fought for each other's place, afraid of the night because its eyes didn't capture much of it but cautious of the day because it couldn't stalk its prey. The hurricane season was its favorite. The bodies of water surrounding the Grand Sierra Madre were its habitat, areas far from large human settlements, but it was possible that some stressed specimens traveled all over Norus to find other places to settle.

Caisam woke up slightly at that moment. He seemed restless because of the presence of two strangers, who might have been just two blurry spots in his vision, but he had barely enough strength to grunt slightly. Irene knelt immediately to calm him, surrounded his head with her hands, and spoke to him softly to let him know that we were there to help, although I doubt the young man could fully comprehend her.

My master tore Caisam's shirt to better examine his wound.

—The beast only attacked him once —Irene said—. Then it tried to do the same with me, but he defended me so fiercely that it didn't dare touch him. Some time later, it gave up, let out a kind of screech, and went back to the lake. I brought Caisam here for him to recover energy, but he was worsening beyond what I could have imagined. He was very brave for me.

—He was brave, yes, but he also had luck —my master said, scolding children—. The Argatroz would normally apply a debilitating poison with which Caisam would have fallen in a few minutes without proper healing, but the beast that attacked them was a pregnant female, a specimen that changes its hunting habits for the sake of the next generation. The beast injected Caisam with a parasitic worm to extract his life energy. First, he would fall into a deep coma, then he would die slowly over the course of two cycles. It didn't touch him when he was defending you because that would have ruined the power source for its future offspring. That's what really happened. The fact that both are still alive is due to fortunate coincidence. And the fact that we arrived in time, and that we have the necessary knowledge to reverse the situation, is another sign that some god wants them alive —He looked at me—. My apprentice is not as knowledgeable about Argatrozes as she should be since she refuses to read my exhaustive research, but she does know something about parasites.

Parasites are a special case for the work of healers. Almost every disease can be reversed by enhancing some organs of the body such as the lungs, heart, liver, among others. Fractures, stab wounds, or blunt injuries are fixed by regenerating the affected body parts. Parasites, on the other hand, are not diseases or physical injuries; they are creatures living in the victim's body, roaming in their guts while devouring their energy reserves. In the case of Argatroz parasitosis, multiple parasites enter the victim's body through the circulatory system but end up killing each other until only the strongest survives. This stage lasts between a few hours to five days, depending on the victim's organism. The process to remedy the situation was simple to understand but complicated in practice. I had to inject a harmless solution mixed with a particle of mine that I could monitor. This particle could be anything with which I could link my consciousness and that could store a certain amount of shpabishyss. Once the particle was traversing the patient's body, I would proceed to look for signs of the parasite's presence until identifying its exact location and then perform surgery.

I had the necessary materials in my backpack: the saline solution that my master helped me prepare, the syringe with a mineltite-tipped needle, and the gelatin particle that I would introduce into Caisam, no larger than the thickness of a hair. These elements were part of the basic healing materials and served for a bunch of other things.

I knelt before Caisam to prepare my tools. I connected my mind to that particle, proceeded to mix it with the saline solution, and then filled the syringe barrel with that liquid.