“What’s all the ruckus!?” A clearly well-fed aristocratic man walks out of one of the fancier looking houses, followed by a couple more people behind him. Their uniforms making it plenty clear that they belong to the military. Although the first guy definitely looks to be the most fancy of them all.
“And that’d be your people in charge, sis.” My sister comments.
“Yeah… Looks like it…”
Mister fancypants looks angrily around him before his stare lands on me. He immediately grits his teeth.
Weirdly enough, the other officers behind him look rather relieved to see me.
With angry steps he walks towards me, stopping only a couple of centimeters away from me. “Are you the cause of this chaos?”
“I was merely stopping people from fighting. Which should have been your job, I assume.” I reply coldly.
“Don’t tell me what my duty is. I’m her majesty’s representative and I shall be spoken to as such, with respect! Speaking of which, I am not the one who defiled her land with dark magics.” He gestures towards the cracks in the earth, still seeping with lingering shadows.
My hand clenches around the hilt of my blade, but I quickly bring my other hand to it to steady myself.
“Were you thinking of striking me down?! The insolence!” The man grabs for the hilt of his own sword.
I bite my lip. “Someone… Can someone please shut this guy up before I do something stupid?”
“I’m very glad you’re asking.” Max swings her axe into the dirt and now with free hands cracks her fingers. On my other side my sister rolls her neck, she doesn’t disarm herself though.
The man takes a couple of steps back. “Don’t you dare come closer to me!” He looks behind him at the other officers. “Do something!”
The others raise their hands and on their turn also step away further from the guy.
When he turns back around to face us, the tip of my sister’s longsword is already waiting to receive the man’s chin.
He gulps.
This gives Max plenty of time to disarm the man by throwing his sword to one of the others standing behind him, after which she gets out a rope and starts tying the man’s hands behind his back.
“You will not get away with this!”
“I really think you should shut up right now, bud.” My sister retorts. “When my sister is dressed like that, that means she’s not in a very happy mood. You should be happy that we are dealing with you and not her. Last time someone pissed her off badly, the guy got exploded into his own cathedral. Sadly wasn’t there to witness it though, so I’d be quite happy to see it happen now.”
“Ca-cathedral…?” The man’s gaze goes from my sister back to me. “T-That was you?”
“Do you know many other pink-haired Nekote with black wings in black armor?” Sam asks, she’d been standing next to me this entire time.
I nod at the man, still very much repressing my displeasure. But it’s going back down rather fast now.
The man shakes and soon after falls to his knees. My sister’s sword luckily already distanced a bit from his face.
Sam whispers into my ear as the guy starts to grovel. “I’m pretty sure he just realized he stared death straight in the face.”
“Mhmm, he should be happy I at least got more control of my powers now…”
The people who were standing behind mister McDouche come forward up to Sam and I.
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“Thank you, Milady, that at least solves one of our problems.” They all kneel before me.
“To me it seems like you could easily have solved that issue yourselves.” Sam replies. “There’s a lot more of you then there was of him.”
“The man is practically untouchable.” One of the lady officers replies. “Family of the ducal line that married into the royal family. If we didn’t fall in line it could easily cost our heads.”
“But you clearly didn’t help him when he asked though.” Carol joins in on the conversation.”
“The situation changes dramatically when there is an actual Goddess involved.” The first officer continues again and looks up to me. “We are fully aware we weren’t in control of the situation anymore, but when we tried to convince Lord Seau of that, to undertake some sort of action, we were just set aside and we were practically forced to act like everything was going fine.”
“What is the cause of this entire situation anyway?” I look behind me at the two hostile groups. The stench of sickness and filth is still clearly around. “Surely an army knows how to keep the hygiene? It’s one of the things most important in warfare, no? To keep your army fit and healthy.”
All the officers give me a nod. “The problem is twofold, which works in tandem. First of all, there is talk amongst everyone that there’s sabotage in the camps. Like you said yourself, we do make an effort in keeping hygiene a top priority, but for some reason we regularly get spills of waste which has poisoned the village’s water supply. As for our food supplies, those aren’t safe either. Even under guard we seem to go through them at a devastating pace.”
“Can’t you drink and fish from the river to supplement it?” Sam asks.
“No. The fear is that water has been poisoned by the bandits up-stream.”
“So there’s bandits in the camp too.” My sister comments as she has just finished up gagging the big mouthed lord. “And you have no clue who?”
“The adventurers are blaming our soldiers and our soldiers, the adventurers.”
“Which probably doesn’t get helped by the fact that the adventurers don’t have any representation in the leadership thanks to our friend over here.” Lise continues.
“Exactly.” The officer nods.
“Well, that’s one thing we can try to fix right now.” My sister smiles and turns towards the group of adventurers. “I’ll go and see if I can get them to appoint a couple of people to be their spokesmen. That way we at least get some dialogue going. So just wait a second for that second point of yours, it might be best to already discuss that together.”
The officers agree with that while my sisters goes to mingle with the adventurers.
“In the meantime…” I turn myself back to the group we are standing with. “Let’s at least do something about the wounded…”
“And let’s go heal those kids’ parent.” Sam ads. “We did promise after all.”
“We did.” I nod.
Max and Carol stay behind while Sam and I go around to heal the sick and wounded we can find, stopping at the little house the kids pointed us to earlier as well. There we find their mom sick in bed with the kids sitting beside her.
“Thank the heavens.” The mom smiles weekly. “I thought it was too good to be true to have a healer come help me. But it’s even the Goddess herself who has come to pay me a visit.”
I had opted to stay in my armored form as it does give me quite the power boost for healing as well, although it had shifted into my white armor along the way. A shift I had only barely noticed myself, but a lot less terrifying, yet still awe-inducing, to the general populace nonetheless.
The kids all look astonished at my armor as they look around after their mom spoke. Their mouths dropped open and they were all completely speechless.
“Sorry to drop in, but your kids told us about you.” I smile at the lady, giving her a quick look over her body. I can see quite a bit of scarring on the parts of her arms that are exposed. Although they do appear to be very old.
“Were you a soldier?” Sam asks, it clearly hasn’t gone by her either.
The lady nods as she tries to muster the strength for her to sit upright a bit more. The oldest of the kids swiftly helps her to do so. “I was. It was a long time ago though.” While she speaks of it as if it was that long ago, this Ulusu lady doesn’t look any older than 40 to me.
I sit down on my knees next to her and hold my hand over her chest. As I had expected I feel the distinct presence of disease that has taken hold of her. Quite probably thanks to drinking water from the well outside.
“Just hold on for a second.” I reply as I start channeling my magic. In a moment black streams of smoke seeps out of the lady’s skin, dissipating quickly in the open air. I only need to channel my magic for a second for the dark residue to have completely left the body. “There, that should be all. The only thing you need to do now is rest. The disease is gone but it has still tired your body out quite badly.”
She nods. “Thank you. Thank you so so terribly much.” The lady wipes away a tear of happiness. “I thought I was done for… Who else but me would look after these kids.” In turn she put her hand on the kids' heads, giving them all a quick rub through the hair too. That makes all the kids start sniffing.
“If you want I can heal these too.” I nod towards the scars on her arms.
The lady shakes her head. “No, that won’t be necessary. They are memories I’d like to keep. Not fun or happy ones, but they help me remember the people who I’ve lost and the reasons why I’m still here.”
I smile and get up again. “Then we will be going now. We are going to make sure no one in this village will get sick because of the vileness in this village ever again.”
-Be it of bacterial, viral or human nature…-