The hot, stale odor of rotting flesh assailed Cira as she entered the first floors main ward. The room was lit with a single light artifact in the center of the room, which was silent if not for the rasping, labored breaths of patients packed into the room like cards in a deck. In the dim light she could see red rashes and skin lesions sprinkled about the patients exposed skin. Many of them had a painful, dry cough.
“Is that smell from the patients?” Cira scrunched up her nose behind the veil of her new set of robes—it purified the air she breathed yet the smell of death still reached her nose.
“No, your reverence, that’s coming from the second ward.” The nervous doctor accompanying her replied, exacerbating the unfortunate misunderstanding that was the outfit Cira spent months crafting. The flowing white, silken quality to them. The long sleeves that hung like ribbon and gold accents, and to top it off, she had to change the most critical part of her image. Atop her head was a raised, rounded white cap with folded edges—completing the look of something not so sorcerous.
“I keep trying to tell you, I am a sorcerer, not a priestess!” Incidentally, the priests from up the Boreal wore similar robes, and to make matters worse the priestesses wore veils. I’d bet my shiniest rock they don’t serve a legitimate medical function! “I’ve never even heard of these priests, but anyway… Please don’t tell me you’re storing the dead in the second ward.” She fixed him with a stern glare above the veil.
“Well… We have no choice.” The doctor fidgeted and looked down, “The auditor said we can’t store them outside, and we have no other place to put them. The ones here don’t have family to claim them and there aren’t enough people contracted to bury them, so they just pile up.”
Cira stared at him with bewilderment, and he continued, “But, uh, the salt keeps them from going bad—”
“Why haven’t you burned them?” Cira asked the obvious question.
“First of all, with what?” Cira looked out a window at the vast landscape of salt and steel. The doctor sighed before continuing in a low voice, “We used to. After they… dried up. We lack the facilities and Earth Vein banned burn piles when the visitors began staying away. It’s one of the things they look for during their audit. Then they built the upper level’s trade deck to hide the infirmary down here and fool passing merchants.”
“Enough. Not another word.” Cira was suppressing her anger towards the incompetence at play here but had to remember it wasn’t this poor doctor’s fault, “We’ll bury them immediately. Get these guys some masks and meet me in there.” By these guys she meant the two guards accompanying her by order of the overseer.
“Wh-what? Where? And how? There isn’t enough time in the day!”
She didn’t like how that boded for the quantity of corpses in the next room, “How many times do I have to tell you?”
With that, the sorcerer walked past all manner of the sickly. A wheezing old man, a child with lesions on her face that looked in a daze. Only some were cognizant enough to even gawk at the shining priestess in the room. Many were under blankets trying to sleep one painful breath at a time. Next, she opened a door and walked into the second ward, immediately shutting it behind her.
This room was full of death. Literal piles of it. Though no corpses looked too thoroughly decomposed, the rank odor was enough to make Cira doubt her veil and skills as an enchantress. Of course, the robes prevented her from catching a disease, in theory anyway. They weren’t just for show though, and she’d never catch a cold wearing them either.
It was the hat that increased the efficacy of her healing, otherwise she’d be wearing that pearly white pointed one. Healing was never her strong suit, being a subset of holy magic. It couldn’t be helped though since the design she followed to make the full set was entitled ‘priest robes’, she lamented, lacking the materials to make a replacement.
As this room hadn’t been deemed necessary to see inside of, it was completely dark save for the scare moonlight peeking in the window. “How about we brighten it up a little.” She held up a finger and a little ball of white light appeared. She flicked it towards the ceiling as it expanded, lighting the whole room up.
It was worse than she thought. There had to be a couple hundred bodies in there all clumped together, given no care whatsoever. Cira didn’t have any particular traditions regarding death, but the sight didn’t sit well with her. They were all once citizens here, hard workers likely, but here their neighbors wer forced to pile them up like trash yet to be taken out. Cira was disgusted to the core. As hard as she was trying not to care about the company responsible for it all, she couldn’t help but seethe.
The door swung open, “Miss, uh, sorcerer, what are you planning to do?”
Cira could feel a heavy draft coming in from the window and blowing all this death and decay right into the room full of the plague-ridden. That much could cause a plague of its own.
“Close the door, you fool!” The young doctor obliged with fear in his eyes, closing the door behind him and the guards. “And why aren’t any of you wearing a mask?”
“We’ve already got it…” He coughed, “But more importantly, what are you planning? We don’t have enough men or time to carry them all outside the city.”
Cira walked over to the window, beckoning the three over. Outside was a narrow walkway before the structure ended and beyond that was a large field. All salt for a few hundred feet until the next pathway crossed by.
You.” Cira said, pointing at one of guards, “I need ten more of you.”
“I’m sorry, your reverence, all of our guards have strict orders for their posts.” The man denied Cira, which irritated her to no end.
“And just what do you all plan to do when the bodies pile up? What’s there to even guard in this city? The salt isn’t going anywhere. I’ve been hired to investigate the plague on direct orders from the overseer, who sent you with me for assistance, so assist me! If anyone gets upset tell them where they can find me.” Cira didn’t like being rude, but if someone’s paying her to stop a plague she wasn’t about to do it one room over from hundreds of corpses. “Trust me, you don’t want me to make them walk themselves out.”
Her final comment sealed the deal and the guard ran out of the room pale in the face. The threat of necromancy really got people moving. To put it in a word, Cira found necromancy distasteful. That’s not to say she couldn’t do it, but it was gross, tedious, and above all she was bad at it. Cira could move five or ten of these bodies tops. The other tried to turn and leave as well, but Cira stopped him with a hand on the shoulder.
“Slow down there, pal. You’re still needed here.” To his look of utter confusion, she pointed out the window. Guard and doctor alike looked outside trying to see what she was indicating. “You two start moving the bodies to right there. If it helps, I can remove this wall. In fact—"
Cira raised her scepter aloft. This one was not her own craft, no. Her father created it. Old Gazen said it was orichalcum but looked nigh indiscernible from gold. It was about half the length of a normal staff and held a perfectly spherical crystal with two twisted streams of the metal forming a spiral cage around it.
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As that crystal orb lit up, a squared off section of the wall pushed out, separating from the building itself. The guard was sweating with his hand frozen halfway to his gun. Meanwhile the doctor shouted, “What the hell do you think you’re doing to my infirmary?!”
He reached out as if to stop her, but Cira deftly stepped away, “Relax. I’m not going to have you walk these corpses past all the patients. Besides, it will air the place out this way. I’ll put it back later.” She lifted the wall-square up and laid it down out of the way over on the salt.
“Do you expect us to jump?” The frazzled doctor was grasping at straws after having all his concerns refuted so soundly. Still, watching a piece of his building get tossed out of the way at this suspicious priestess’s whim was tough for the man to swallow, “You can’t just do whatever you want here!”
“Of course not.” Cira answered his initial question, and ignoring the statement that followed she did the same with the railing, as it would get in the way. The scepter in her hand increased her affinity with holy magic, complementing the set nicely, but also worked as any other staff would by increasing cast efficiency.
Cira proceeded to mold the salt into a short bridge to meet the steel walkway outside the second ward, complete with its own salty siderail to prevent anyone from taking a tumble. “Here you are. You can carry them straight out and across.”
The two were speechless so Cira took the opportunity to continue instructing them, “Doctor, if the other one brings back an even number of guards, come find me. Otherwise, let me know when you’re done.” With that ball rolling she could finally start with this plague business.
“Wait, what?” The doctor’s confused voice trailed behind Cira as she returned through the door to the main ward.
“Now, where to start?” She didn’t have any of her tools or equipment—it would have been too much to carry. She started by approaching the dazed girl she saw earlier, “Excuse me, do you mind if I examine you?”
The girl looked up with unfocused eyes with a visible haze over them. She didn’t say anything but wheezed with each breath. After a moment the girl tugged on her robe with a frail hand. Without further ado, Cira cast another spotlight to see better.
The girl’s pupils constricted, but it was noticeably slowed then she shielded her face with her hands. “Sorry about that,” Cira dimmed the light and dulled its color. “That’s interesting though. Her awareness is hindered and reactions slowed, but the light hurts her eyes even through the haze.”
Using spatial sight, the observation spell, she confirmed that the haze wasn’t just a build up of tiny abrasions, it was some kind of film. She also discovered this girl was severely dehydrated. Conjuring a stone cup, she filled it with (conjured) water and held it up, “Can you drink?”
She looked at the water longingly but couldn’t reach her hand high enough. Cira held the cup to her mouth and coaxed the girl to drink. She greedily lapped it up and Cira let her have her fill, as the cup filled itself with just one simple trick.
“There, you should feel a little better at least. Can you tell me your name?”
“It… It’s,” Her voice was coarse and Cira hurt just hearing it, “It’s Del.’
“it’s okay, you don’t have to talk if it hurts. My name is Cira, and I’ve been hired by the overseer to look into the plague. If you don’t mind, I’m just going to try a few spells that may help your symptoms. You can nod or shake your head.”
The girl nodded, so Cira continued the exam. She was weak, but everything was working fine. She didn’t have a fever, nor was her immune system acting up. Del’s muscles seemed deteriorated, but otherwise healthy. As if they had been damaged but long-since healed, though she couldn’t make sense of it.
“Have you ever had health issues before or been particularly weak before this?” Del shook her head.
The only real discernible conditions were dehydration and malnutrition, otherwise her physiology seemed healthy but somewhat stunted. Even some of her bones were less dense than others. Some of her findings could be explained away with malnutrition, but it’s not the sort of thing to happen over the span of a few weeks it supposedly took patients to become ill enough for the infirmary, or with such inconsistency across the body.
The crystal orb glowed bright, and a small stream of light flowed onto the lesion encroaching on Del’s left cheek. The festering wound closed up but didn’t erase completely. Not quite a scar, what was left looked like the beginning stage of a sore, etched into the young girl’s face.
My magic shouldn’t leave scars unless that’s how the skin looked originally. I can even heal scars within the first year, so that still doesn’t explain it. “How long have you been sick, Del? Can you show me how many weeks on your hands?” The girl held up two fingers, then reached for the cup of water again.
Weeks changed from sky to sky, but they were usually around the same length. And two was not very many of them no matter where you fly. Helping Del drink, Cira considered where this left her. This much confirmed that something was preventing her from healing the skin lesions completely. She tried again with a rash on Del’s arm and the result was the same, leaving a faint pink mark instead.
Unhealable wounds pointed to a curse, but none of the other signs were there. For one, cursed essence was very hard to miss. It was corrupted mana, so you’d have to be blind to mana to miss it. That said, cursed essence could be hidden, though not so much once it reaches the recipient in the form of a curse. Effects may vary, but a curse is a small fragment of the mana on your soul which has been corrupted.
On the flipside, those with zero mana capacity are immune to curses. More importantly, since there wasn’t a dark wizard actively suppressing the curse sitting next to every patient, Cira could safely rule it out.
If it wasn’t a curse, Cira should theoretically be able to brute force it out with holy magic. Before, she cast ‘Heal’. That was just your basic healing spell and could be cast frivolously. This time, she raised her scepter and a golden light illuminated the entire room. What looked like a miniature sun appeared and slowly floated towards Del before disappearing into her forehead.
One should not mistake the grandeur of ‘Holy Restoration’ with the simple lamp spell Cira used to light the room, for it can easily be discerned by its divine brilliance despite its otherwise similar appearance.
As it disappeared into Del’s head, her whole body glowed. All of her yet untended sores and wounds closed up at once, but not completely. It was more effective however, and even the spot on her face receded until it was hardly noticeable.
Much, much better. But it still didn’t do the job. And I can’t possibly cast that spell on everyone here. It took a lot of mana, but that’s to be expected when diagnosing a patient. Now she knew not even holy magic was completely effective.
She still couldn’t draw any conclusions from just that. All it meant was something was preventing the damage caused by the plague from healing—whether that’s the plague itself remaining within Del’s body or something else entirely would take a lot more troubleshooting.
Cira moved on to trying to treat the disease directly. Normally she gets some sort of sign or indication as to what she was trying to cure in the first place, but she was more poking around in the dark until she could get around to grabbing her equipment.
“High cure.” She started with the lowest spell that can cure diseases while watching with spatial sight. No change in the patient’s temperature or immune response. Her blood flow remained consistent and nothing particular happened in the head. She didn’t know much about what went on in the head but normally when this spell takes there is a surge of something similar to lightning mana.
Moreover, there was no response from the meager reservoir of mana inside Del’s soul. Cira couldn’t see it on any level like her father could, but noticing fluctuations and patterns was within her ability. It was enough to see her spell had no effect. Much like the girl’s body, her soul seemed weak but stable.
“I guess I’ll ramp it up a bit.” She held the scepter aloft again to perform a spell she could only cast with it in her hand, “Sacred cure.”
This one worked the same as the last holy spell, but the small golden sun disappeared into Del’s chest, right to her heart.
“Nothing… Damn.” The results were no different, though it could not be denied that this slew of healing spells had left the girl in a far better state than before. Cira explained that she was still trying to figure out the cause and cure, then was about to find another patient when an irate man approached from behind.
He coughed twice before saying, “Hey Priestess, why does the girl get all the healing? Shouldn’t you be more worried about those of us that should actually be working instead of rotting away in here? Isn’t that what they’re paying your for?!”
Cira sighed. I need to find a way to wrap this island up, “I assure you, I don’t work for whoever you think I work for.”
“Huh?” The man stared at her like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, “You’re obviously a priestess of the final sky, I saw your magic just now. You’re trying to say Earth Vein didn’t hire you? Why are you even here then, for fun?”
Cira was enjoying how glaring over her veil felt, but simmered down shortly thereafter. This man was just scared, really. Every bone in her body was trying not to direct her anger to these Earth Vein folk either. She knew it would only spell trouble, and it wasn’t her mess to poke her nose in. Perhaps that magician they hired who gave up before shall receive my scorn instead.