“You some kinda idiot?!” Pappy unleased his chiding upon poor Cira.

“I already said I was sorry,” she refuted.

“Sorry my ass!” He turned to the flock of confused guards, “And you morons, go calm everybody down!”

Cira had caused widespread panic across the city. Committed a social faux pas, as it were. She simply thought it ridiculous to have all of her things so far away when she had so much work to do right here. The salty field next to the infirmary was calling to her. She of course landed on the side opposite the mass grave.

As the guards scuttled away, Pappy laid into Cira for her lack of self-awareness and failure to ask for permission or so much as to let him know. His accent got thicker the angrier and further through his tirade he was, and some insults she didn’t even understand.

“Wherenda hell’d yer guards go?!” He growled.

“They’re inside helping with the patients.” She had repurposed them.

“Wha?! Got dammit!” Pappy look to the only other person remaining, “You, Doc, go get m’damn guards!”

The doctor obliged, forcing Cira to endure another rant until he returned, but it only served to stoke Pappy’s anger once he saw that her guards had multiplied. Once he had thoroughly vented his thoughts, Cira managed to convince him to let her keep ten. Once you got down to it, it was hard to argue with the sorcerer he had roped into saving the city.

“Just don’t go pawnin’ these guys off, dammit! Anytime ya’ want to do anything at all, ask this man here if it’s a stupid idea. Got it?!” He slapped a middle-aged man with dark hair on one of his broad shoulders. The guard in question looked less than excited about the role.

Well, I’m glad he’s done yelling at me. How long has it been? What a waste of half an hour. I better get out of here before he starts up again—

“Pap, ya’ old goon!” Cira’s friend from the harrowing rope escape appeared, “You really let this woman land here? Scared the hell outta my dear Rosey!”

Guh! Betrayal!

“The hell I did, ya’ friggin salt nymph bastard!” Pappy turned to her, getting his second wind.

I can’t let him keep going, quick! “My, Chip, how good it is to see you! And who is this lovely woman?!” Presumably his wife, she had ashen hair and crows feet adorning her worry-etched face.

“Ah, this is me wife, Rosalie. She is lovely, ain’t she?” He wore a proud smile, but his face had a dark cloud hanging over it.

Rosalie timidly approached with tears in her eyes, “Thank you so much for saving my Chip. I know I can never repay you… But I’m afraid I have to ask you another favor.” Her voice was shaking.

“Love, we talked about this…” Chip interjected, but his wife fell to her knees, hands clasped, and begged. Cira became very uncomfortable.

“Please, please, won’t you save our daughter? We’ll do anything you ask! We just can’t lose her!” She wailed and pleaded at the sorcerer’s feet. The salt beneath greedily soaked up her tears.

Cira only wished she had something better to tell her, “Sorry, I haven’t discovered much about this plague yet. For now, the best I can do is treat the symptoms, but if you’re daughter is inside the infirmary, I’ve already treated them to a degree.” There were no young girls among the dead of the third ward, so she thought it a safe guess.

“Truly…?” Rosalie looked up at Cira like the angel she’d been waiting for. It made her… even more uncomfortable to say the least. She latched onto Cira’s robes at her ankles, sobbing, “Thank you… Thank you so much!”

Chip reeled in his wife to a degree and Cira relaxed for a moment until Pappy spoke again, “Chip you sonofabitch, I was in the middle o’ yellin’ here. Don’t interrupt me!”

Chip just laughed, “Hey Cira, you know they say there’s as many islands in the sky as there are stars above. But put ‘em both together and you know how many wrinkles this old geezer’s got. Hah!”

“Wha?! Hey, you… You bastard! Gyahh!” A vein popped in the aforementioned geezer’s forehead, and he turned red. Cira legitimately feared for his heart as she failed to conceal her snickering.

“Point is,” Chip continued, “You gotta stop getting so worked up all the time or one day you’re gonna wake up dead.”

He’s gonna what—

“I don’t giv’a damn! I’ll finish yellin’ when I’m done yellin’!”

“Pappy, sir, I don’t mean to be rude,” Cira started, “but I’d very much like to get back to work so that I may one day soon go to bed. You say you just woke up, but do you realize I’ve been healing your citizens since we last spoke?”

“Wha? That’s that and this is this!”

“I was also thinking your elevator is far too straight. It would be much better if it did a loop before arriving at your office, wouldn’t you say?”

“You threatenin’ me girl?! Gah! You’re even more insuff’rable than yer old man!” He was breathing heavy, the trusted guard he assigned Cira patted him on the back, but he shook him off, “Dammit, I’m leavin! Don’t cause anymore trouble! Lomp, don’t let ‘er out o’ yer sight!”

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And the overseer finally stomped away.

“Phew… What a character.” She said to Chip who looked like he’d just witnessed a narrowly avoided catastrophe.

“You… You really just went and told him to go away.” He was speechless.

“I didn’t really know what to say. I’m not good with people like that.” She replied, noting the exasperation on—was it Lomp…? On Lomp’s face.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, madam witch—”

“Sorcerer.” She corrected Rosalie.

“Madam sorcerer, do you think we can see our daughter?”

“Sorry, I can’t let anyone into the infirmary. I still don’t know how it’s spread.”

No exceptions when the stakes were this high. Spreading the plague further would only make this more difficult, and if they caught it later it could be on Cira for her negligence. Chip managed to talk her down, but they turned the conversation around, begging for something to do that could help.

“Well, there is one thing I could use a hand with, but it’s not in the infirmary.”

So, Cira gained two new tour guides to show her around. They happily agreed. It was a chance to do something useful and keep their minds occupied instead of wallowing at home. With any luck, they could help the sorcerer solve the case, they thought. Rosalie worked at one of the farms so it was perfect.

She instructed five of the guards to resume hydration duty, and the other five to run around town spreading the word that they could get healed at the infirmary. Lomp and Lomp alone would be her guard/little helper.

“Make sure to stress that I haven’t found the cure, I am only treating their symptoms until further notice,” She instructed. That will certainly ensure there aren’t any misunderstandings.

“A moment, please.” Lomp cut in, “Didn’t Pappy say not to send these guards off anywhere?”

“Why else would I need ten of them? This is important work. I’m certain the old man understood that much.” She replied matter-of-factly, “He only left you here to keep an eye on me.”

He sighed deeply, “Fine then. So where are we off to?”

“The farms, of course.” Cira pushed her golden hair over her shoulders and skipped along after the tour guides.

The city was not small, so walking from the center to the outer edge took about as long as Pappy spent yelling, and the sun reflected off the rough metallic surface just enough to irritate her eyes. Not to mention the heat at her ankles. Cira was getting tired of walking everywhere.

“I really miss my boat…” Her dinghy would take her all over the city. It was actually her first boat ever, hand-crafted by her doting father.

“Weren’t you just on it?” Chip asked.

“Not that one.”

Along the way Rosalie explained how they hadn’t changed anything in their farming techniques, yet the crops still declined. They even tried importing seeds one year and the results were the same. The first farm they arrived at was massive and raised on stilts high above the salt. The structure had a deep base that Cira imagined was full of dirt. Pipes shot in from the side carrying water from the reservoir situated atop the nearby cliff.

After climbing the stairs Cira saw a truly pitiful sight. The fields were half-barren, and the plants that lived, she questioned if they could even bear fruit. They had discolored spots or flaky edges, while their growth was so thin she was worried they’d snap in half if she looked at them wrong. It was a far cry from her garden at home.

‘Hat of the Botanomancer’. It increased her ability to examine plants and looked great. Spatial sight didn’t do much for plants since she wasn’t a real botanist. There was a big difference between botanist and gardening enthusiast, and Cira was the latter. Like most things in life, magic offered a good supplement.

Her vision narrowed and she could see the weak flow of mana within the plant. Most plants don’t have souls, but they all at least had a small amount of nature mana bound to their being. It served as their life force.

Cira was baffled to discover all the plants had a clean bill of health. Looking at the discolorations, one would think it was suffering from a nutrient deficiency. This would show itself in the mana-stalk as they call it, by way of weakened pathways between the roots and the leaves. None of this was present.

She should be able to see a disruption of mana in the leaves where the edges are flaking off, but again, none of this was present. Likewise, the roots were all performing as they should without obstruction or interruption. They were weak, but the size of the plant matched that.

Many of them had strange lumps characteristic of either a disease or parasite, but she saw no abnormal fluctuations or blank spots in the mana-stalk.

“Now this is incredibly vexing…” Cira sighed.

“What have you found out?” Rosalie asked.

“Not a damn thing. These plants are weak and frail, but otherwise healthy. It’s almost like…” Cira was lost in thought, then shook her head,

But that can’t be.”

“What is it? Anything at all?” Rosalie was almost pleading.

Cira was unsure about this, but it wasn’t unheard of for a disease to carry over to different species. She couldn’t see anything with her sight but whatever ailment was plaguing the people had eluded her too.

“It’s just like the patients in the infirmary. Let me try something.” Cira raised a knotted and burled staff in the air and a green light flowed into a stalk of corn in front of her. “Restore flora.”

She cast her plant healing spell and the discolorations faded, along with some of the leaves healing up, though the parts that had fallen didn’t come back. She also couldn’t do anything for the stringiness or wilting. The plant was doomed to be weak as it spent so much time growing in such poor shape, but the wilting surprised her. The soil was soaked and the weather wasn’t that hot, yet the plants were badly wilted.

Of course, stress can do this, but that’s nothing that shouldn’t have been healed away. She confirmed that excess water wasn’t the issue because, you guessed it, they suffered from dehydration.

You have water, and you’re even sucking it up. So, what’s the problem? It’s just like the patients earlier.

“And you’re all certain it has nothing to do with the water?” Cira asked.

“It can’t be,” Rosalie replied, “Many people drink from this reservoir who haven’t been afflicted.”

“Well, I’m not convinced. Can we go look at it?”

“The reservoir? Sure, it’s just up here.”

Cira pulled a jar out of her ring and took a sample of the soil, before returning it. There were stairs leading up from the farm platform to a high up cliff. Once they were at the top, Cira saw a massive pool carved into the mountain of salt, lined with something far stronger than steel. She wasn’t sure what it was.

Chip explained the reservoirs were built centuries ago at the same time as the spring’s pump. Apparently, they had spillways of the same material, but they were rendered obsolete by the sinking spring. Whoever they were could only have so much foresight I suppose. To their credit, as she walked up the stairs earlier Cira could see pillars supporting the basin in areas where the salt had eroded more than others.

She took a sample of the water here as well. When Cira explained that she wanted to see all the farms Lomp, who already looked incredibly tired and bored was the least excited for this development. Continuing the tour, they spent the entire morning and then some walking around between the different farms and the other reservoir, taking samples and performing more tests. Cira found zero inconsistencies between the farms but took samples at each one. She would be able look at each one more thoroughly once her workshop was set up.

“I think that’s about all I can do here.” She said, “And it’s just about time for lunch. Would you three like to join me? I have a couple things to do there, and I intend to go look at the spring after I’m done.”

She was tired, yes, but she’d thank herself later for all this running around today.

“That sounds delightful.” Rosalie excitedly replied.

“Great, let’s head back.” I hope they like red tuna.