Dimitry thought he was ready to work. He thought a job at a hospital would be a welcome relief, that it would be an adequate atonement for his murderous streak.

But what the hell was he supposed to do about this?

Rags soaked in pus, blood, and urine shared the church’s floor with bedpans full of vomit and liquefied feces. Their aerosolized components melded into a gag-inducing stench that filled the entire room. And somehow, that wasn’t the worst part.

Twin size beds supported at least three patients each. Rolling around and moaning in pain, the people laying on them wore clothes caked in regurgitated food and other bodily fluids. Black blisters dotted their purple skin. The epidermis of some patients peeled off, revealing charcoal-colored necrotic flesh underneath.

This wasn’t a hospital.

It was a morgue.

Precious fell into a fit of barely suppressed laughter. “I can’t… control it.”

Angelika trailed behind Dimitry with a hand pressed to her mouth and fingers squeezing her nose shut. The girl’s head twitched forward as if attempting to hold in breakfast.

Dimitry didn’t want her here. The girl was too young to contract a lethal disease that he couldn’t treat. “Angelika, instead of suffocating yourself, go back to the castle and tell anyone with authority that Dimitry asked for two maids to wash bedclothes and towels. When you come back with their answer, don’t enter the hospital. Wait for me outside and stay away from anyone with black blisters and purple skin. Understand?”

The girl nodded and dashed out of the hospital.

With one problem taken care of, Dimitry turned his attention back to the church’s abhorrent conditions and emulated composure. The best physicians always appeared in control. He squeezed between two tightly packed beds and leaned in to examine a nearby male patient.

The man didn’t fare well. A great deal of skin went missing from his leg, leaving behind streaks of necrotic tissue that consumed his feet and reached up to his knee. The sleeping patient took shallow, rapid breaths—he wasn’t dead yet.

Typically, Dimitry would remove petrified flesh with debridement, but there were multiple problems: he lacked tools and supplies, there was too much necrotic tissue to deal with by hand, and even if Dimitry removed it surgically, the underlying plague would create more. He could hack away at patients’ bodies all day and get nothing done.

Surgery wasn’t the solution; curing the disease was.

The first step was to identify the root cause, but even that would prove difficult. A world where people expressed unique phenotypes indicated that life evolved differently than it did on Earth. New biological additions like circuits foreshadowed the existence of novel microorganisms that preyed on them.

Dimitry reached to rub his eyelids but stopped halfway. Who knew what germs covered his hands? If this world was anything like Earth, he had to be wary of bacterial, viral, fungal, algal, parasitic, and prionic contagions.

But what if it wasn’t like Earth?

There could be classes of microbes Dimitry had never encountered before—ones that would be impossible to treat without in-depth knowledge. He shook his head. Before postulating the existence of something novel, he should work with what he knew.

Dimitry glanced at the dying man beside him.

Judging by the black blisters on his purple skin, whatever infected him presented with systemic symptoms. That eliminated prion diseases, which typically manifested as neurodegenerative illnesses. Pathogenic algae affecting skin were rare and therefore an unlikely culprit. Fungi usually caused mild rashes—not darkened blisters the size of grapes.

Viruses, bacteria, and parasites were the most likely culprits. Although the first two would be difficult to differentiate, Dimitry could rule out macroscopic parasites with a series of autopsies. And for that, he needed corpses.

He looked around.

Women patrolled the hospital, tending to groaning patients. They spoke comforting words while mopping up everything from blood to bile. Little did they know, the sullied towels and contaminated water they used for wound care only spread the infection further.

Dimitry turned away from the horrifying sight only to encounter another.

In the corner of the church, a lanky man sawed an unsuspecting victim. He would occasionally reference scattered papers and talk to the woman beside him. She studied his movements with utmost care.

A barber-surgeon and his assistant.

If anyone knew where to find corpses, it was him.

Careful to avoid disturbing sleeping (or dying) patients, Dimitry walked sideways to fit through the narrow paths between beds. He approached the barber in the friendliest manner he could muster. “Excuse me. I’m looking for—”

The barber shoved two fingers into one of many pouches strapped to his waist to retrieve something. A pinch of assorted spices. Then, tugging on the loose skin of a patient’s collapsed blister, he stuffed the colorful mixture into a pocket of exposed flesh. He finished the grotesque procedure by wrapping the wound in bloodied bandages.

The woman beside him looked on with worried eyes. “Will he be okay now?”

“Lili, work as a barber as long as I have, and you learn one important fact: only the celestial bodies decide who lives or dies.” He shook his head. “Not us.”

“It’s—” The patient rolled over, his hands trembling. “It’s burning.” The words dribbled out through clenched teeth.

“Endure the pain and try to rest.” The barber wiped his hands with a pink-blotted washcloth. “Pray to Zera if you must.”

Wearing a dumbfounded expression, Dimitry stood still, processing the shock of seeing someone season a patient like a steak. The horror went beyond excessive leeches or anything else he saw in Ravenfall.

Lili turned around. The pink ribbon of her orange ponytail drooped over her shoulder, half of it disappearing into the collar of her brown gown. She jumped at the sight of Dimitry. “Josef, I think another patient needs your help!”

The barber glanced away from a stack of astrology charts. “No, my dear. His skin is pale, you see?”

“I understand now!”

Dimitry didn’t verbalize his shock. If his interactions with the barber in Ravenfall were anything to go by, trying to change the practices here would earn him scorn. Only once Dimitry proved the efficacy of his methods could he convince his coworkers. For now, making a good impression and keeping the peace was best.

“Hello, I’m Dimitry. It’s a pleasure—”

“If you’re looking to get a haircut or a tooth pulled, find someone else.” Josef buried his face in astronomy charts. “I’ve got my hands full.”

Although Dimitry understood the barber was likely doing his best, rushing to save lives, he wasn’t a fan of the callous tone. “No, that’s not it. I’m here to ask about where you kept deceased patients.”

“Ah, you’re the new body collector. Look around. The ones marked with red X’s died earlier this morning. Get rid of them.”

“Thanks,” Dimitry said, suppressing the urge to correct the ass-backward procedures. He turned his attention to a nearby bed.

Two patients with giant red crosses on their foreheads flanked a third, who struggled to sleep between them. Spices filled both of the dead women’s cut-open blisters.

Dimitry winced. Why would anyone leave deceased patients in the same bed as survivors? Who in their right mind shoved ground herbs and salt into an open wound? This hospital made the barbershop in Ravenfall seem like a presidential hospital suite.

This shithole desperately needed to change.

While exploring the church, Dimitry wandered up a set of spiral stairs. They led to a hatch separating the bed-riddled bottom floor of the hospital from a smaller platform housing a giant, brass-colored bell. There were no windows. Frigid air blew in through a stone arc, chilling him as it brushed by his cheeks.

It was perfect.

Before getting to work, Dimitry aimed to prepare several things: water, tools, and a source of sterilization. Any attempt to stem the flow of disease without them would be moot.

Although purifying water wasn’t possible, boiling it was. Dimitry assumed that the microorganisms in this world were as vulnerable to heat as they were on Earth. With that hope, he ventured to start his own operation inside this very hospital. An open-air space like this one made it easy. And, more importantly, it was desolate. No one would bother him.

Dimitry rummaged through scattered crates. He dug through jugs, bowls, and buckets, but found nothing helpful. Surgical tools would be hard to get. Scalpels, clamps, clippers, retractors, forceps, scissors, needles, and more. Multiple variations of each—in terms of size, shape, and function, were necessary. For now, Dimitry would invest in the essential ones.

However, the biggest problem to tackle was sterilization. This world had neither latex gloves nor anti-bacterial soap.

But it did have alcohol and magic.

Ale, the preferred drink of almost everyone, was abundant. Although it was typically mild, some variants coaxed fire from Dimitry’s nose as it burned down his esophagus—a sign of high alcohol content. Finding a grocer in Malten selling such a product was a priority.

Dimitry leaned against a stone arch and watched a crowded cityscape slightly smaller than Ravenfall’s. There had to be an ale supplier somewhere down there. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too expensive during a famine, because he would need his fifty gold marks for other things as well. For example, a distillation apparatus to purify ethanol.

The existence of aqua vitae showed that the people of this world knew about distillation and had the technology to carry it out. Malten, a city of artisans, was his best bet for finding such a device. There had to be someone who could help.

A distant man’s uproar echoed from between metal-framed buildings, its rage contrasting the gentle breathing of the faerie snoozing within Dimitry’s hood. He turned away from the view to sit on a crate.

Although ethanol sterilized tools, it couldn’t do much more than disinfect people’s skin. To deal with infections, his best chance lay with preservia. Anything that kept food and body parts fresh had to stifle microorganism growth. If Dimitry modified the spell using his knowledge of science, could he target the plague with it?

He took a deep breath of cold air, then headed for the hatch leading downstairs.

There was much work to do.

Two children played in the middle of Malten’s rowdy streets. A girl with a dirt-smeared face hurled knucklebones across the floor and counted her fingers. She grinned at the boy accompanying her, who slapped his hips in defeat.

“Excuse me.” Dimitry stepped past them to reach a shop. A board depicting a glass bauble stood under the store’s outward-facing countertop.

“Sorry, mister,” the boy said. His thin bones protruded past faintly purple skin—a symptom visible throughout the city. One that indicated early onset plague.

Dimitry pitied the child who contracted a lethal disease before they could reach adulthood. He forced a smile. “It’s my fault for getting in the way.”

A buck-toothed man waved them away from behind the shop’s counter. “Move, kids. You’re stiflin’ business.”

“Sorry, mister.”

“It’s not their fault,” Dimitry said. “There’s nowhere else to go.”

“Yeah, times are tough for erryone.” The man shrugged. “Anyway, you here to preach, or is there something I can do you for?”

Although it was cold, Dimitry wiped sweat from his forehead. He spent most of the morning running through city streets, sampling ale for alcohol content while searching for anyone selling distillation apparatuses. “I’m looking to buy some glassware.”

The buck-toothed man smiled as if out of relief. “You’ve come to the right place, then. Anythin’ specific?”

“Do you know what distillation is?”

“Wha?”

Dimitry frowned. It was the answer he expected, but not the one he wanted. “Do you know how aqua vitae is made?”

“You mean the medicine?”

“That’s right.” Dimitry recalled the taste—it was like that of brandy and wine. “I need the tool that boils wine into aqua vitae.”

“Them rounded glass bottles with long and slender downward tubes?” The man pressed his elbow onto the counter to support his head as he leaned forward. “Yeah, I made those before.”

The last time Dimitry distilled anything was during his undergraduate chemistry classes over a decade ago. His memories from those days were fuzzy; he didn’t remember what modern distillation columns looked like precisely, but the principles behind them were simple enough. The ‘glass bottle’ the merchant described could pass for a primitive version of such a device. “How much?”

“Two gold marks each.”

Dimitry’s eyebrows shot up. It was an amount that could buy at least five casks filled with ale during a famine. “That much?”

“Yep. Specialist tools are expensive, and the tube is narrow and hard to shape.”

“Can you go any lower?”

“No can do. Firin’ up the furnace for a single job ain’t cheap.”

“How about this?” Dimitry slid three gold coins across the counter. “You make me two of those ‘glass bottles’, and I’ll pay you one and a half golds each. I could use a spare and you can fill two orders at once.”

“Sounds good to me.” The buck-toothed man grinned, slipping the clinking coins into his palm. “If you want, you can wait inside while I light the charcoals. It’ll be warm in here. You like tea?”

“Sure do.”

After handing Dimitry a porcelain cup filled with clear teal liquid, the glassblower sat in front of a small brick oven to fiddle with ash and sand. What he molded would be a big step towards stable alcohol production, but not the last.

Dimitry had additional plans—ones that involved magic. As he sat there, sipping bitter tea and planning a visit to Vogel’s Enchantments, a sharp glare caught his eye.

A man with a filthy goatee peeked out from behind the iron supports of a stone building. He stared, and after flashing a vicious scowl, vanished down the street.