The Goliath of a building overhung the edge of the abyss with almost magical strength; its base dug into the ground, the floating corridor supported by nothing underneath as more than a 100 foot drop proceeded below it.

The stone was heavy and worked, carved into shape and amalgamated into a whole building expertly. It was sturdy and a pinnacle of craftsmanship—unrivalled beauty in the otherwise mundane and subdued village.

The most unusual formation then caught her eye; where the structure hung over the depths, it was not floating unaided. At the very end, where the hallway drew to a close, a massive pillar of earth, soaring up from the white fog below, met with the bottom of the hallway, granting it a plinth to rest its weight.

From afar, Riza could faintly make out steps carved into the earthen pillar, descending into the hole below.

This was her destination. Having been picked up by a polite, albeit awkward, robed, young man going by the name of ‘Saniel’, she had been escorted over to this building which initially caught her eye when she first arrived here but the uniqueness only grew more pronounced the closer she got.

Truly, it was one-of-a-kind.

The hustle and bustle right outside was far busier than anywhere else she had visited; there were constantly people entering and leaving, more armoured figures than she had seen in one place, and even the smell indicated the number of bodies that passed through here.

Little did she know how accurate that statement would be for as soon as she was inside—and hustled down a corridor to her designated room—did her role in this organisation become far more clear in her mind.

Beds lined the walls of this wide hall, each with a person grumbling and moaning deposited on them. They were all in varying states of undress, with various dressings on them. Some wounds were submerged in raised troughs containing a mysterious, viscous, yellow fluid while others were bandaged with disconcertingly brown cloth.

This, as far as could be ascertained, was an infirmary.

Saniel introduced her to her current supervisor—a man by the name of ‘Sylan’. He was a stout fellow, of large arms, short stature, and a friendly look on his face. His red tunic helped to hide the bloodstains, as did the darkened leather apron he had on as well.

Expecting armour like the soldiers or robes like Saniel, what Riza had received to wear was nothing like either of those; it was an apron. Newly made and a size too large, she donned it as soon as she was given it, confusion over its purpose crystallising into clarity.

Happily, she also received new clothes to replace her torn and dirtied ones—as well as a new cloak! Although, she did feel a sense of loss when her beloved item that she had lovingly handcrafted was taken away from her.

No sooner than Sylan having explained her duties to her, Saniel left—though, she did catch them quickly discussing a few things. Their talkings were hushed, and her comprehension was limited at best; all she could make out was something about healing and levels.

“Ever used [Cleanse] on essence something before?” Sylan asked, walking up to an injured soldier whose arm was floating in the strange liquid. Now that she was closer, Riza could begin to make out the mottled, greyish hue to the skin. That can’t be healthy.

Riza shook her head, the only word she didn’t understand being a crucial one.

“Well, it’s quite simple,” He began, reaching out and firmly grasping the soldier’s arm with both hands.

They visibly winced at the sudden contact but their body was too enervated to do more than squirm slightly. Riza felt a pang of sympathy.

“Life aspect magic is about a something of something. Those of us with the right skills can something to life essence better than those without the something skills, and it’s that something that something essence into doing our something.

“Something your something, reach deep within yourself to feel the something of essence inside you, and feel how the life something burning inside you.

“Remember that feeling as you something the skill.”

As he finished his explanation, tendrils of green light shot forth from his fingertips, moving like a bullet through water, and sank into the arm he was gripping. They dug into the bare skin, penetrating where the grey colour was strongest, and over the course of a few seconds, the skin reddened, the soldier stopped squirming, and the visible wounds looked a tad bit cleaner in the arm.

“Basically, this.” Sylan motioned towards all the other beds in the room.

With an unexplainable desire to not disappoint, Riza quickly got to work. She danced between patients, quickly and efficiently pouring the ten essence each use of [Cleanse] cost into the people.

Like a miracle drug, she watched skin tighten, become health and clean, multiple times over the course of the next hour and two.

What caused all this? She didn’t know. At one point, she did try asking Sylan but he waved her away, clearly not wanting to answer the question but disguising that as desire for her to keep working.

Of course, she had an inkling as to their provenance.

Fog. That’s what it seemed to be for her. A wound that can only be healed by cleanse? Maybe that’s just coincidence but with a giant, foggy bowl beneath us? Seems all too likely.

So, that begged another question: Why are they going into the fog in the first place?

The patients, contrastingly, seemed much more receptive to her questioning.

Riza didn’t begin right away—feeling that interrogating those in pain was a bit inappropriate and inconsiderate—but the curiosity eventually grew too strong. Besides, she cleansed them; it was only fair they’d sate her hunger for answers respectively.

The hall was big, and Sylan was busy. The quiet conversations she had were drowned out by the moans and groans of pain, masking the noise.

She did manage to confirm that fog was indeed responsible for many of these injuries, but only a few.

What may have been a surprise wasn’t; the wounds bore too much similarity to markings left by monsters and animals. The fog alone couldn’t have done this. In her experience, at least.

They were attacked. It explained the need for armour, but even that wasn’t enough for some of them—hence their presence in the infirmary.

Parts were coming together—different nuggets of information adding up in her mind. Fog, monsters, delving into the unknown…

She had a hypothesis.

Riza wasn’t sure when she had first found the abandoned village in the forest but the nature of it began to unfold. The white monsters weren’t just living there but they were made there. In the fog, at least. That’s where they emerged from.

That’s also where some of the mundane injuries came from as well; the white monsters. The people in this village, it seemed, had to battle both the fog and the monsters.

So, what was the fog? It gave birth to monsters and acted like a poison upon contact with skin. The three times she had encountered it, it was all at the bottom of a hole somewhere, underground.

An idea.

A gas. It all added up. It stung like shit when it made contact with your skin and somehow got inside of you. From there, it’d poison you.

That, for all intents and purpose, was a poison, like chlorine gas or something acidic. She couldn’t draw a connection to any element or chemical she was aware of but she never particularly liked chemistry in the first place.

The fact that it sank to the ground, and didn’t go through materials, suggested it was physical—and not just a magical manifestation—and was denser than air.

Why did the monsters congregate around the fog? Her initial assumption that they were born of it drew back, being replaced by another hypothesis; they relied on it to live. Perhaps it was their form of oxygen, enabling a type of respiration, much like carbon dioxide does for plants.

Then, her mind drew another connection. Many days ago, back at the farm. The day of the storm. Fire.

Fire scared the monsters. Why? It could be they were naturally vulnerable to fire but anything living was and they seemed exceptionally fearful of the light and heat.

The fog is flammable. If I relied on hydrogen for survival, I know fire would scare me far more than it does now.

Once these suppositions were implanted in her mind, questions that she asked turned away from finding out what had happened to digging for information about the fog—about the monsters.

When she had finally visited all the people in the room, cleansed them of all their injuries, she now had a time to rest and take note. Balance the sheets in her head and make sense of all the information she had gathered.

Establish the basics.

Number one, there’s a poisonous gas that’s heavier than air that monsters need to survive.

The gas is flammable and ignites when in the presence of a fire. Currently inconclusive whether it acts the same way when not in the presence of oxygen.

Additionally, not only does water not put out the fire but it actually makes it worse.

Number two, there are monsters that climb up from the fog below. Either, they scale the sides of the hole or ascend through the only plinth leading down.

No objective has concretely been determined for the monsters, except that they sometimes prioritise dragging dead or living bodies into the fog rather than attacking more people.

Assuming the monsters have the intelligence of an animal, that’d suggest the bodies are giving them something they need to survive; food, perhaps?

Number three, there are soldiers in armour and robed people going down to fight the monsters. The purpose seems obvious—protect the village from the monsters—but nobody answered the question directly when I asked.

It was impressive I got as much information as I could already.

Sylan did give her some information as well.

Number four, the yellow fluid seems to ease the pain or delay symptoms from the fog poisoning. For some reason, Sylan didn’t [Cleanse] everyone right away so he soaked their limbs in the liquid to buy himself more time. Maybe he didn’t have enough essence?

It seems likely, especially since more people ended up here than usual during the time of the rainstorms.

Add to that the fact he works alone, I could easily see him becoming overwhelmed during a particularly gruesome night.

Matters settled in her head, a new pair of patients arrived. Newly injured, dripping blood, and one person lacking a hand, Sylan and Riza quickly ushered them into a pair of beds.

While Sylan got to work on the more distressed one, Riza promptly cleansed both of them, cleaning off all their wounds and fog-induced injuries. Unlike Sylan, her essence regeneration specialisation meant that she could keep herself full of essence to administer whatever healing was necessary.

And Sylan noticed this too. As time drew on, he continue to look towards Riza as she excessively cleansed the patients. Rather than just dealing with whatever injuries required the use of cleanse, she went out of her way to practise with the skill.

Removing dead skin, cleaning blood, popping spots; all manners of functionalities she tested.

With just one person alone, Riza could easily spend 100 points of essence just, frankly, playing around.

Sylan never commented on it, however. He stuck to his own job; that of healing wounds. The flesh stitched itself back together, reddening up and revitalising the patients in much the same way [Leech] did to her.

He didn’t get around to everyone, however. These were soldiers; they had hundreds, if not thousands, of health points that needed healing. It was understandable why Sylan would run out of essence to spend on cleanse, not to mention just not having enough in general to tend to every patient.

That was why, at the end of the day, bodies still littered the room, tossing and turning on beds as they groaned away in pain and delirium.

Sylan had been conscious of the time all day. During lunch, he had dragged her out of the building and towards the outside canteen. Long rectangular tents were set up with many more tables and chairs laid out alongside them. Lunch mostly constituted stew or soup with some vegetables; food easily sourced from a farming village.

Intimidated by the large forms of people crowding around the people dishing out food, she stuck by Sylan as he jostled his way up towards a man, standing behind a cauldron of glop with a ladle in his hand.

Sylan might have been a large man but he was by no means tall but that didn’t seem to stop him from pushing past people; in fact, there seemed to be very little resistance at all compared to the other lines of people, Riza noted.

It was the first time Riza had experienced freedom ever since the farm. Sure, she was accompanying someone at the time, but that was by choice. There was no escort, no person watching her every move. Hell, she didn’t even need to leave the infirmary if she didn’t want to; it was her stomach more than anything else that dictated that decision.

The situation was similar with dinner and when it was finally time for her to end her duties for the day, Sylan freely told her that, not even caring what she would do next.

She wasn’t lost without cause; Saniel had popped in earlier in the day to inform her where she’d be sleeping.

A dormitory, to be exact, though she doubted there’d be much space inside; the building seemed identical to every other one she had seen.

And she was right. Inside, the room size was to be expected, except it was cramped with beds and a few people as well.

“Riza!” Exclaimed an excitable, young voice as soon as she stepped inside.

Without any time to react, the teenager darted towards Riza, exuding joy from the bright smile on her face.

“Hello. Lefie,” Came Riza’s stilted reply, unsure how to respond to such energy. The other three woman in the room didn’t seem to care too much; two of them sparing a glance towards the pair while the last not even caring about the noise.

Incidentally, two of them wore robes while the last was already mostly undressed, climbing into bed.

Their beds were small deals, each with a chest at the end (sans lock).

Eagerly, Lefie dragged Riza over to her bed, happy to explain what she had been doing.

The enthusiasm Lefie exuded, combined with her desire to regale Riza with what had happened, warmed her heart as she smiled, all too happy to listen.

A touch of familiarity in an otherwise unfamiliar place.

Her tale was simple, straightforward, and rather similar to Riza’s own

There was a trial, and then an appraisal. Afterwards, she was assigned her duties and then it was now.

“Nothing much, currently,” Lefie answered when Riza inquired as to what she was doing. “Something, mostly. Fighting.” Seeing Riza’s look of worry, she quickly clarified: “Not serious.”

“Not serious fighting?” Lefie nodded as the tension drained from Riza’s face.

Hesitant though she may have been, she told Lefie of her own experience. It wasn’t much but the encouragement she received—the lack of dismissal at her own actions—helped to lessen the sense of self-doubt she was beginning to feel.

She had made mistakes, yes, but Lefie understood them. Hell, she empathised with them. She eagerly shared her own feelings of fear, how she wanted to run away at times.

The emotions that had been eating away at Riza… Lefie helped, more than she expected.

Riza had a purpose, currently. A job. She had lodgings, food...a friend.

Maybe, just maybe, things weren’t so bad after all.