It took another two full days before Kade’s body had healed enough for him to utilize mana and Chaos again, though he felt his mind was far from recovered and he hadn’t yet left the building. His actions in the sickhouse still haunted him, regardless of how it might have worked out. That he got lucky was an understatement bordering on the delusional, as he was brutally aware that he’d effectively tortured those people for his own ends. Blaming a mysterious compulsion brought him no comfort. On the contrary, knowing his behavior could be so violently impacted by an unknown force inside him was terrifying in a way he’d never experienced.
Rationally he understood that part of his drive for power since arriving was a desperate desire to feel in control, and to find a purpose that would help him feel like he wasn’t just a lost victim. But right now he felt small. Something about fighting had almost immediately felt natural to him, and he’d managed to lose himself in it for a while. But being the arbiter of fate for the three false Keepers, then somehow becoming a cure for Chaos Sickness was too much for him. He had to admit to himself that he wasn’t built for these types of big situations.
He’d been plagued by the question of what to do next. He already knew he wouldn’t be able to reach Karthas in time to join the expedition, and he’d be forced to search for them based on a rough understanding of where they were headed. But should he even go? How could he be more valuable as one more warrior than he would be saving thousands suffering from Chaos Sickness back in Karthas? Maybe it was foolish and self-centered to even consider going.
“I need to go into the True Chaos.”
Cen turned and stared at him from across the room for some reason. Kade looked at him questioningly, but the man just shrugged and went back to reading. Either Cen or Olus was still always with him, even though Presla had convinced the villagers–and Tal–to leave him to recover. Kade turned his mind back to brooding, and the final worry he couldn’t shake.
There was something else beyond questions of responsibility and his own unfortunate actions. Something he’d dismissed at first, given his injuries and the traumatic experience, but as he’d healed and the feeling lingered, he was no longer able to ignore it. The compulsion wasn’t gone, it had only…shifted. It was like there was an emptiness where the undeniable urge had been, and Kade’s imagination had been running wild considering what might fill it.
Kade had long since lost track of time when he heard a commotion outside, and he wasn’t surprised when Tal finally burst in. Olus was trying to physically restrain him and Presla spoke rapidly in hushed, disapproving tones, but Talnius would no longer be denied. “Keeper!” he roared, as he threw his apprentice to one side. “We’ve waited long enough. Gemma says your pathways should be fine. Why are you sitting on the damned cure for this misery!”
The mentioned healer rushed in from the nearby office, and planted herself in Tal’s path. “You will not use me to justify bullying my own patient. I told you I expected him to recover in a few days, and nothing more!” Tal ignored her and pushed his way closer to Kade’s bed.
“Well, can you speak for yourself? Or do you enjoy making a village full of desperate people wait on your whim?” The whole room exploded at that, with everyone coming to Kade’s defense. Their help only made him feel worse, and he knew that it was time to answer some questions for himself, and hopefully figure out his path at the same time. He let out a long breath before standing up slowly. The room quieted as they saw him, and he could feel them waiting.
He closed his eyes, and tentatively let a trickle of mana flow through his body. There was slight pain, but it was already receding–more like tensing a muscle that had fallen asleep than straining an injury. Kade hesitated only for a moment before repeating the test with the smallest amount of Chaos he could, then at last opened his eyes. “We can do this. But we need to go outside, and somewhere private.”
***
Presla had taken them to her home, which backed against the village wall, and was safe from prying eyes. Kade looked around in satisfaction, a well tended garden and some remarkably green trees providing an air of tranquility he truly needed. While he didn’t fool himself into thinking he could keep his somewhat questionable methods a secret if he had to help the entire village, he didn’t want an audience for this first attempt beyond the small group that had followed from the sickhouse.
Kade had put as much thought as he could into how he might perform this feat again without losing himself, and now he was in the uncomfortable position of needing to test those methods on someone. He’d explained this to Presla quietly as she led them through the village, and he’d volunteered before he could even suggest an alternative. Tal had objected, obviously, but it was clear from the first that he didn’t expect her to back down.
To her credit, the proud woman didn’t show a hint of fear as Kade approached her, a chain forming into an intimidating needle. “Are you absolutely sure?” he asked, knowing the answer.
“This is the least I’ll have done for my people, and it’s hardly selfless to put myself at the front of the line to be healed.” Kade nodded, though he doubted anyone in the group believed her claim of self-interest. Presuming the wait would be painful enough already, he directed her to a nearby chair, then began his first test.
Unfortunately he’d been unable to come up with a less invasive method of accessing her soul. Between several discussions with Gemma and some utterly fruitless attempts to manipulate the Chaos externally, it became clear that his brand of help would never be considered pleasant. He tried to be quick, at least, and the needle shot forward without hesitation. Presla did her best to stay still, but she was a long way from an unfeeling coma patient, and she nodded in assent when Kade asked permission to restrain her.
Tal came closer as chains wrapped around the woman, but Cen and Olus were already there, pushing him back. Kade ignored them all, focusing his vision on the flows of energy inside her, and attempting to achieve with intellect what he’d only managed with instinct the first time. His first hurdle actually came from how healthy Presla was compared to the terminal villagers he’d managed to cleanse before.
There was vastly more Calm in her system, with the Chaos acting more like a pollutant or an impurity. He was ashamed to admit he’d put no consideration into keeping the patients alive when he’d done this the first time, and he wasn’t sure how to leave the ‘healthy’ energy inside her. Thankfully the problem solved itself, as he quickly realized he couldn’t affect anything that wasn’t Chaos. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or not in the long term, but it removed a fear of truly becoming some kind of energy vampire for now.
At last he began to manipulate the Chaos flowing through her with more purpose, and nodded at Gemma who came closer, as prepared as she could be. Kade’s goal with his tests was to see if he could avoid what had happened previously, where the Chaos had rushed into him. He wasn’t particularly worried about going over his limit again, as there should be easy ways around that–he hoped. However, there was the nagging fear that taking Processed Chaos–as Kade had begun to think of it–into his own Soul Core might be unwittingly feeding the strange compulsion that he sensed lurking somewhere inside him.
His first attempt was the easiest, and also least likely to work. As he pulled a small amount of Chaos from Presla, accessing the ability almost uncomfortably easily after using it so wantonly before, he tried to redirect the energy into the ground. The plan was simple, he began the ‘pull’ as he thought of it using his Soul Core, then tried to force the energy into a second chain connected to the one piercing Presla, which in turn was buried deep in the ground.
As expected though, the Chaos just ignored the grounding chain and raced into his hungry Soul Core. The amount was small enough that even his strained Core wasn’t bothered by it, but Kade shuddered visibly as he felt something shift inside him. He could only think of it as a wrongness of some kind, and while it didn’t exactly make him feel sick, it somehow made him feel different. Presla noticed his reaction, “Are you okay? We can stop,” while her voice quivered with pain, Kade could tell she was more concerned with him than herself, and steeled his resolve. He wouldn’t leave this woman to her fate to avoid a feeling.
“It’s fine. You have this flowing through you every day, I can handle a few moments.” He was relieved when she just nodded, and he hurriedly moved on to his second test. Lifting one hand above his head, he pulled more Chaos from her soul, and tried to force it through his mana channels and up into his hand the moment it entered his body. Unfortunately he failed once more. Not only did the energy race straight into his Core, but once it did he couldn’t differentiate it from the rest of his Chaos reserves He only knew it was there by the slight strain he felt, and the feeling of wrongness increasing.
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Kade barely stopped himself from sighing out loud, not wanting to elicit any more sympathy from the woman he currently had impaled and chained to a chair. Instead he tried his last test, which should leave her cleansed whether it helped him or not. Leaving his hand pointing skyward, he at last pulled in earnest, and the Chaos inside her was rapidly drained into him. This time he began blasting the energy harmlessly up into the air, hoping that the rapidly expelling the Processed Chaos would lessen the effect it had on him.
Presla’s face twisted in pain and discomfort, and gasps from the others indicated they could likely see the telltale purple energy leaving her. The process was at least blessedly quick once he began it in earnest, and mere moments passed by before he was able to withdraw the needle. Gemma only gave him a heartbeat to stop firing the energy into the sky before she gripped Presla, healing energies restoring her exhausted body.
Kade withdrew the rest of his chains and went to lean against the wall as the group moved closer to Presla. He could hear their joy and astonishment as he let his head rest against one arm, the coolness of the wall a slight comfort after the feeling of heat from the Chaos he’d just pulled in. The final test had failed as well, as his reserves were now almost completely empty, but he could still feel something wrong inside him. He would have sworn he was contracting Chaos Sickness himself if he wasn’t capable of examining his energies with his own eyes, revealing nothing like what he saw in the villagers.
So here it was, he thought, the tradeoff and the quandary. He couldn’t rid himself of the uncomfortable effects the cleansing brought out in him, but could he really let people die to avoid a feeling? He knew he was rationalizing, recognizing that guilt was at least as big a motivator as any kind of altruism, but that didn’t change the reality. He may not be interested in being a hero, but that was very different from letting countless people die of a disease only he could cure; that kind of apathy may as well be villainy.
Knowing his course was clear he returned to the group, and saw that he was interrupting a tearful embrace between Tal and Presla. Cen and Olus were grinning, while Gemma stood alone, shaking her head in disbelief. Apparently seeing the after effects and witnessing the act itself were very different things. Having already burned more time than he’d have liked, Kade interrupted their celebration. “If our healer has given you a clean bill of health, I think it’s time we got to work.”
***
There were two hundred and seventy-two villagers in need of healing, and Kade ambitiously hoped to get through them all in a single day. Gemma had reluctantly agreed, admitting that the only healing she needed to do was repairing the wound from the incision, with no one else in the village being so far gone as to need immediate restoration beyond that. Understanding that the grizzly nature of the healing would intimidate the patients, they chose a method that provided as much expediency as possible while still keeping the actual cleansing private.
The villagers were brought into the sickhouse one by one, and left through a backdoor in the office which led to several houses converted into recovery areas. Tal claimed that these people would walk through fire and welcome a thousand needle-chains to be cured, but Gemma insisted on as smooth and dignified a treatment as possible, while still turning the town into an assembly line for Kade’s benefit.
The treatment started out well with more than a dozen patients being cycled through in less than an hour. It wasn’t quite as quick as Kade wanted, but they’d started very early in the morning, and he felt he was growing more adept at the process with every new person helped. Kade managed to do three additional patients in the next hour, and kept trying to find ways to speed things up.
He was surprised to find that he’d been worrying over nothing, as each person made the uneasiness inside him smaller instead of larger, and he began to think he had been imagining it all along. It was a new flavor of Chaos, couldn’t it just have its own unique feeling when flowing through his pathways? He’d long since gotten used to the feeling of his other energies, maybe he’d just underestimated how unusual a new type would feel.
As he passed fifty patients and the sun was high overhead, Kade got even more ambitious. Hadn’t he drained more than two dozen patients on his first attempt? He was vastly more proficient now, and yet here he was, with a lineup over two hundred long, wasting everyone’s time. He explained this to Gemma, who reluctantly agreed to let him try two at once, and Cen and Olus rushed to move things around in the sickhouse to accommodate the new setup.
It wasn’t as much more efficient as Kade had hoped, as most of the time was spent moving people in and out, not with the process itself. Having to stop to blast energy into the sky every few cleanses was also time-consuming, and Kade started growing irritated. Based on the success of helping two at once, he approached Gemma after another hour.
“We need to speed things up!” he insisted. The healer looked uncomfortable, but replied calmly.
“Keeper, I want to be respectful of your time, but this is a delicate process, and these people are scared.” Kade looked outside at the seemingly endless line and threw up his hands in frustration.
“Don’t you understand? We’re curing Chaos Sickness! How many more sick are out there? Have you been to the wards in Karthas, because I have. They’re suffering, and I could be there tomorrow!” Gemma looked ready to argue, but unexpectedly Tal spoke up.
“Just let more in, Gemma. He barely needs to pay attention at this point; if he says he can handle more, let him. You can’t honestly believe there’s anyone out there that isn’t in even more of a hurry than he is.” She looked defeated at that.
“Five, we’ll do five at once and see how it–”
“Ten. Ten minimum,” Kade interrupted. “I’m wasting too much time here as it is.” Gemma looked as if she might be grinding her teeth, but seeing no one willing to back her up, she nodded tersely and began instructing Cen and Olus on how to set up the room for more people.
By the end of the next hour they’d helped over a hundred of the villagers in total, but Kade was no happier. His chains were limitless! If they’d just stop wasting his time he could just walk into the street and cure everyone at once. He’d already begun standing outside so that he could safely blast away the energy at the same time as he ripped the Chaos from the grateful villagers, but it was all still so slow.
Another argument ended in the number of simultaneous cleanses being raised to twenty, and finally Kade was beginning to feel like they were showing him the respect he deserved. At this rate he could do everything. He could finish here, then race to Karthas and heal all of the sick there too. Then he’d be free to take his exam, and everything would be perfect. Why were Cen and Olus staring at him?
As they passed two hundred villagers saved, Kade was already picturing himself walking through Karthas, people cheering his name as he cured the incurable. He might not even need to become a Keeper. Didn’t Karthas have a King? They would likely raise him to the throne after saving so many lives. He tapped his foot impatiently as the group of recently healed slowly shuffled out of the building, some wasting his time by stopping to thank him. Didn’t they know there were more people to heal?
At last he couldn’t stand their rudeness any further, and chains whipped out to wrap around each of them, and rapidly deposited them in the recovery area. Safe and sound. Some fell down but that was fine, Gemme could mend broken bones but only Kade could cure Chaos Sickness. Only him.
Someone was talking loudly as his chains fired out again, this time grabbing half of the remaining villagers and pulling them into the sickhouse. He swatted at the bug buzzing around his ear, then his chains lanced into the forty or so patients that needed his help. He was a hero.
***
At first Cen could only stare in horror and confusion at what he was seeing, but when Keeper Kadeus backhanded Olus into a wall and he heard bones crack from across the room, his instincts kicked in. He didn’t know what was happening to the man that had both saved his life and put a collar of death around his neck, but he knew this was what he had trained for–people were going to die without him.
Those terrifying black chains had already ripped open the roof and one wall of the sickhouse, and Kade was laughing like a madman as they whipped out to gather more of the villagers to him. All at once the group was impaled, and Cen could see purple energy draining out of them and being pulled into the crazed Keeper. Strangely the drained villagers were still being deposited in the recovery area, though most were practically thrown, and they largely ended up in a heap.
Cen seemed to realize at the same time as Keeper Kadeus that the line of infected villagers was gone, and the chains went wild as the man lurched outside. “MORE!” Kade roared as Cen raced after him, summoning two swords that had never seemed so inadequate before. Buildings were being ripped apart as the enraged Keeper looked for more people to drain, but he didn’t seem to understand that he’d gotten them all.
At last he turned to face Cen, hundreds of chains flailing wildly and transforming into gruesome instruments of death. Spears of purple energy materialized around Kade, all aimed in Cen’s direction, and he knew he was going to die. He nearly fled when a hand came to rest on his shoulder, and relief went through him in a wave as Master Talnius stepped in front of him. “Go, son. Get your brother and run, I’ll help the Keeper.” Cen wanted to argue, wanted to face this like a true warrior, but years of obeying his teacher–and intense terror–had him charging off without a word.
“Come on then, boy,” he heard Master Talnius whisper as he walked toward the chained monstrosity, twin maces at the ready.
“GIVE ME MORE!” the man who had been Cen’s friend screamed in a voice that chilled him to his core. Cen couldn’t stop himself from looking back as countless chains and the ominous purple spears all hurtled toward his master with deadly speed.