A knock at my office door startled me out of my work.

“Uh. Enter,” I stated, trying to remember to project authority. The door opened and Nodel stepped in. “Oh, perfect. Can you run these numbers back to Morgun? I just want to finish up with this and then I can join you.”

“Of course,” Nodel said coldly, collecting some parchment from my desk where I motioned. “But I brought Seranedra to speak with you. Is now a good time?”

I blinked a few times, trying to remember the name, before it clicked. “Oh,” I said, trying not to let my voice express too much in the way of negative emotions. “The priestess. Right. You can send her in.”

Nodel frowned slightly, but nodded, and left the room. When no one stepped in immediately, I glanced back at my papers for a moment, but soon I heard the door close and I looked up to see the priestess standing by the closed door. She wore the same Church robes as she had last I saw her, while observing the tournament, and was still wearing the veil which obscured her face.

I stood, moving around my desk and motioned towards the seating area in the office, two comfortable couches which were arranged opposite a small table. I gestured to the opposite couch from the one I selected. “Please sit.”

The priestess bobbed her head slightly, and moved to sit opposite me. “Thank you, your highness.”

Her voice was softer and more delicate than I expected. I appraised her again to remind myself what I had seen during the busy tournament.

Seranedra Nadimdot (Lv 31)

HP: 146/146

MP: 388/453

Status: none

EXP: 2889/3100

Skills: 4-Point Magic(+), 5-Point Magic(+), 6-Point Magic(++), Cooking(+), Inkmaking(+), Literacy(+), Needlework(++)

Given her level, she had a fairly low HP, which was unsurprising given that she probably lived a life of comfort. She was more full-figured than I was used to seeing in my second life, where most people ate at a subsistence level at best, which suggested she had grown up in relative luxury. The capital had more people like that than elsewhere in the Kingdom, but rarely was anyone more than what I would consider plump from my old world.

As opposed to her HP, she had a rather high MP with a limited skillset, which spoke to how much practice she must have had with healing. I wondered how far along she was in 6-point magic, if it was her focus, and at what level she would reach mastery. Though she did not have many skills, a rather singularly focused expert made sense for an on-site healer for the palace. At least, it would, but she also had an expert Needlework skill.

“Do you do a lot of healing for the training yards?” I found myself asking, breaking the silence that had stretched while I had studied her stats and mused on her skills. “Healing accidental injuries or hurt soldiers or the like,” I clarified.

“Um, no, your highness.”

“Huh,” I said. Since I had not seen her since I moved into the palace, I assumed she had been busy with other tasks, as she had not been in attendance for me. “Perhaps I was mistaken. I thought you were staying on the palace grounds, like Nodel.”

“I–I am, your highness.”

“Then what do you… do?”

Seranedra said something in a small voice.

“Could you speak up? I didn’t catch that.”

“I… like to do embroidery.”

Well, that explains her high Needlework. I realized I was glaring at the priestess, and I took a breath, trying to relax my expression. “I’m sorry, I’m a bit confused. I thought you were here on behalf of the Church. Providing healing, that sort of thing.”

“I can heal!” she exclaimed, sitting up, and then shrinking back down. “I mean, I am able to provide healing if you need it, your highness.”

“...but that’s not your role in the palace? I was hoping to talk to someone in charge of the Church. Are you not the, like… high priestess, or something like that?”

Seranedra was silent for a moment. “Nodel didn’t tell you? I just assumed that you chose her…” she trailed off.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Clearly, Nodel withheld something from me. Perhaps you can enlighten me.”

Seranedara squirmed in her seat. “Ki–um, Rugnor kept us in the palace and by his side as… potential wives. He was trying to decide who to make his queen and who would give him the strongest heir.”

I sighed angrily. Of course he was. I’m already so tired of that idiotic man and the messes he left behind. Why hadn’t Nodel told me? What did he do to these women?

I softened my expression and voice. “That sounds… untoward. I’m sorry. Was he improper? Did he… hurt you two, in any way? Did he force you into anything? I’m not sure what kind of reparations I can make, but anything–”

“Oh! No, your highness, no. The courtship was kept… pure. The heir had to be legitimate in his eyes, so no child could be conceived until after marriage.”

That settled my concern that he was seeing who could give him a child first. Perhaps Nodel was just embarrassed? I needed to sit down and talk to her after this. If not seeing who would give him a child first, I assumed the former king was trying to decide who would give him the stronger heir. Nodel was a tremendously powerful mage for her age, and Seranedra was clearly a powerful and talented healer. I suppose that, combined with their relative youth, that made them both strong contenders for becoming his queen.

“When you never called for me, I assumed…” Seranedra said in a small voice. “I have been waiting to be informed that I should leave the palace. Um, your highness.”

“Wh–ugh. No, it–” I stammered, then stopped and took a breath. “My apologies, Seranedra. This has been a misunderstanding on both sides. Nodel is a trusted advisor and a friend, and operating in the palace as such, not as a potential marriage partner. I’m not… that’s… I would not choose a queen in this manner. I’ll release you from whatever… arrangement or custody that’s in place here as soon as possible.”

Seranedra sat there quietly, hands wringing her priestess robe. Her veil still obstructed her face, and I wondered if that was by Rugnor’s order. Some kind of scar, perhaps—but no, she’d just heal it. I did not know Rugnor enough to determine what would stop him from choosing a strong mother to his heir, but Nodel had not been forced to wear one, so I presumed there was a reason. Some sort of facial disfigurement might explain the surprising timidness the woman was displaying.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I do need someone who can connect me to the right people at the Church, though. I’m trying to make some reforms to how it operates, but I don’t know who to speak to. Do you know who the Church leader is? Are they in the capital?”

Seranedra was quiet for a moment before she spoke up in a voice that was obviously trying its hardest not to sound offensive. “You are the leader of the Church, your highness.”

I frowned. Really? I was not that surprised that there was no separation of Church and state, but something about that still seemed off to me. Given the Kingdom’s history, either the crown had taken it over once it was unified, or the Church was new, relatively speaking.

“So there’s no separate…” I reached for a word that worked, and found myself struggling. “Mouthpiece? Speaker? For your…” I again found myself blanking. “Maker? Creator?”

A silence stretched, and Seranedra shrunk in on herself as she answered. “I’m not sure I understand your highness’s meaning.”

“Your…” I waved my hand up in the air, towards the heavens. “Founder. Whoever you worship.”

“Who we worship?” the priestess asked, tilting her head to the side slightly.

“Yes?” I said, my inflection betraying my confusion. I had really not paid attention when I was at the Church as a child, and I had avoided it like the plague since. “Who do you worship? Not the king, I hope.” If so, I would have to dismantle the whole institution.

“...we don’t worship a person, your highness. The Church worships magic.”

My thoughts stuttered as I played back everything I remembered about my introduction to the Church at five years of age. I began with the idea of the Church. At five, I had only been conscious in the world for a year and a half, and my understanding of the native tongue had mostly occurred in the haze of my infant brain, which my former life’s memories had struggled to find purchase. Even after that, I had a lot of difficulty translating between the two languages, because language tended to be a product of its time and of place. There were words that could not properly translate, because what they stood for did not exist in this world, and there were also words from my world that I had allowed to become my natural translation for words from this world.

When I looked at the native word for Church now, with the hindsight of all that I knew, I more clearly saw its etymological elements, and the way it was built out of components similar to other native words. When I had performed a one-to-one translation to English, I had looked for a word that worked, and found “Church.” In retrospect, the native Horuthian word for the Church was more like “Worship House.” Because of my mistranslation, I had let my biases from my first life build up around the entire concept of the institution, including concerns about organized religion abusing power and the meaning of blasphemy.

If healing magic was not blasphemous, then why was it forbidden? The answer was obvious, in that it was a massive safety issue. Healing magic was magically expensive, and a novice could easily fully deplete their MP and burn their HP, and even die. The people of this world could not see their stats like I could, so it required careful training to do safely.

What about the vast wealth on display? Well, a lot of what I had seen was impressive stone work. The kind of work that, on Earth, would require skilled artisans and required a lot of expensive labor in a low-tech world. With stone magic, was it really even that big of a deal to make a fancy stone building? I had built an entire walled farm with relative ease.

Intricate decor like stained glass and gold plating were expensive, yes, but the buildings were also important for the walled cities. They performed services like the Kingdom’s census, the healing, childcare for the community, and more. It was not really a surprise that they would have some wealth invested in them. The wealth on display in a Church could hardly compare to the palace. In truth, it hardly compared to the wealth I had personally stockpiled away.

I could not help it, and laughed out loud. My nerves had clearly been frayed by everything that had happened lately, and my laughter turned almost manic as I uncontrollable broke down at my own foolishness. I’m such an idiot. I had no idea what I might have done differently if I had not been so adamant in demonizing the institution from the start, but if nothing else, I had let my biases control me and it had created a huge oversight. After I got it all out, I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked back at the priestess who was unreadable behind her veil at my outburst.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been… a bit overwhelmed, and I finally realized that I might not have all the answers.”

“Do you need healing, your highness?” she asked, standing up and stepping around the table toward me. I did not, at least insofar as I had not lost any HP.

“It’s not going to cost me a gold coin, is it?”

“Of course not,” she said, a hint of amusement in her voice. I nodded at her, and she moved to pull something out of her robes.

“Because, I’m guessing, the crown set the price of healing. How much of the income from healing at the Churches across the Kingdom goes directly to the capital?”

“All the profits after expenses,” she said as she gathered up the 6-point magic circle from the gold chain she had retrieved, and focused on it, lightly touching my brow with her other hand. A healing spell washed through me, only the second I had ever received from an outside source. It felt warmer than my own, and I let out a breath and closed my eyes.

“And the Churches in places like Roko, who refuse access to the Al’Tiolese– er, southerners?”

The healing ended, and Seranedara stepped back. “A long-standing rule in the Kingdom that goes back to the end of the southern war. Healing was Horuth’s advantage in wartime, and the southerners were denied access to avoid exposing the secret and allowing them to rebel.” I could almost hear her speaking through a frown. “Of course, the south is so well integrated now that it’s a relic of a previous time.”

I stood, facing the priestess who had healed me. “Right. So. How do we fix this?”

“Fix this, your highness?”

“Yeah, like I said in my coronation speech– wait, let me guess, you weren’t in attendance.” Seranedra shook her head, and I chuckled. “Well, I want to change this Kingdom for the better. Part of that means being egalitarian, making sure that everyone has the opportunity to grow and contribute. I want to make sure that even people of Al’Tiolese heritage can get healing when they need it, and even any Velgein who might be in the Kingdom. Part of that means reducing the cost of healing as well, because right now there’s a class divide as to who has access, just as much as the racial one. Equal-access and affordable healthcare is an absolute must for the Kingdom to flourish. Possibly even free healing, someday. Although, hmm, the cost of healing probably subsidizes the free childcare, and pays wages. I need to get access to the expenses and balance the budgets and see what we can manage.”

I realized I was rambling, and took a steadying breath. This is why I carefully wrote my coronation speech and secretly read it from a parchment behind an illusion.

“I still don’t know all the details, and making the reforms to Churches across the Kingdom will require a delicate touch and a steady hand. If there’s no leadership beyond… well, beyond me, I suppose, then do you know anyone in the local Church who could help?”

“My grandfather is a rather well-respected priest in the capital, and he can probably help get you more information,” Seranedra said.

“Fantastic. That’s a good place to start then. If you could connect us, I can go from there.”

Seranedra nodded, and I started to turn to see her out.

“Um–if, I, if your highness is not opposed… May I help? What you described… helping to make that a reality will do more good than I could ever do alone in my lifetime. I became a priestess because I wanted to help people, to take away pain and give people their strength back. It would be an honor to help you make your vision a reality,” she said, twisting her hands nervously.

I shrugged. “Sure. I did want a go-between, and developing the reforms and figuring out the roll-out is going to be a big task.”

If it were not for Nodel and Atlessoa working on other aspects of what I was trying to do, I would not be able to do any of it. It would help to have someone already on-hand to move this project along too.

“Uh, but… sorry, I don’t want to be impolite if it’s a sore subject, but... what’s with the veil? If you prefer to keep it, that’s fine, but if you don’t need it, well, it’s a bit awkward talking to a piece of fabric…”

“Oh!” Seranedra said, her hands rising to the fabric. “I didn’t know if you would require it like Rugnor did. Let me just…”

Her hands disconnected a fastener of some sort, and the veil fell away.

My body promptly forgot how to breathe as my heart decided to try to beat its way out of my chest while my stomach flipped over itself.

Oh.