*** Mili ***

“Good morning Kethmi,” I said cheerfully, pushing open the door to her cottage. “How’s your arm doing?”

She was standing at her hearth, stirring a large kettle over the fire, assisted by her two young sons, Rivi and Rami. They were dipping in as their mother stirred, dumping chopped up rangka and milled athma into it without interrupting her movements. The gamey smell of mangtherm and the gentle spices filled the single room and kindled a warm glow within me, despite the frigid morning wind that came blowing in through the open door with me.

“Ah, Mili. Come on in, sit down,” she said, stepping away from the pot and setting out an extra place setting on the table behind her, just like she always did when I came to check in on her. I watched as she grabbed a bowl in one hand and reached for a spoon with the other, only to come up short. Her arm ended in a stump, wrapped in bandages.

She paused for a moment, looking down at her arm and processing what was wrong. I wonder what went through her mind in moments like this.

It’d almost been a month since the attack.

The villagers of Anghelen were struggling to get back to a sense of normalcy, but the damage was still fresh in everyones’ minds. A little under half of the population was dead. The western half of town was so heavily damaged that most of the buildings were marked to be torn down and rebuilt because they were too damaged to repair.

The process was only just beginning. I had never really spent much time in Anghelen before this, so it was interesting to see their… dynamic… in a situation like this. Me and dad had seen our fair share of emergencies in Magora villages out in the Helefiran. Given the nature of our work, we were sort of drawn to them. Whenever a member of their community was in need, everybody came together to help out. Sharing their food and homes. Working together to rebuild damaged buildings. Consolidating members of broken households into other families. It was always inspiring to see...

...but Anghelen was on a whole other level.

I don’t think I ever heard about a formal meeting to decide people’s roles in the reconstruction. In the days immediately after the attack, I woke up and everyone just knew what they were meant to do, and work was already started.

Teams of people swept through town, assessing buildings and deciding whether they’d be removed for good or rebuilt. While they worked, other teams went out into the woods to forage and hunt. The food stores Anghelen had set aside for winter were severely damaged, but luckily it seemed like the village wasn’t the only thing affected by the attack. Prey like the Mangtherm were fleeing the Helefiran like nobody’s business. It was deeply concerning, but at least it meant they wouldn’t have to worry about food.

And on top of all of that, another team was on constant rotation, preparing everything the hunters brought in for storage and cooking communal meals for everyone else. From what I gathered, normally food was handled on an individual household level, but with so many people being displaced there were kitchens set up all over town offering warm meals.

Kethmi’s house was one of those. The pot of stew they were making was far more than just the three of them could eat on their own. Everyone just instinctively knew what to do.

Well, almost everyone.

It’s probably because I’m an outsider, but I was lost in the flurry of activity. Luckily, I had apparently gotten Old Lady Kelaren’s attention in the infirmary during that first night, so she just started giving me orders. At first, it was more crisis care, mostly with helping people that had developed infections. I don’t know where those winged creatures came from, but their bites were particularly nasty. Nearly everyone who had been hurt by them, even just people that got tiny scratches, developed awful fevers that took hold just days after exposure and didn’t let up.

We eventually found some things that helped, but that’s its own story entirely. At first it was so violent that we were losing people daily, but with a specific set of herbs and salves we were able to stabilize the majority of the people who had made it that long and they were mostly making their own slow recoveries. There were a few exceptions though.

Mostly with people like Kethmi.

There were a handful of people that mysteriously recovered from their infections incredibly quickly and Old Lady Kelaren had no clue what it was that made those people different. I knew exactly what it was, but it wasn’t something I could be so obvious about.

Once I put two and two together, I tried treating the others who were suffering, but I couldn’t help them all and keep my powers hidden. If it was as easy as giving first aid, I could probably manage it, but once the infection took hold it took far more energy out of me to reverse it. I snuck out one night and managed to cure one person and start treating another before I collapsed. I woke up some time later without having been seen, but I had to just limp back to Guisen’s house and sleep off the fatigue. After that, when there was suddenly another miraculous recovery, Old Lady Kelaren was far too vigilant for me to make another move.

Dad’s warnings still echoed in my mind and I couldn’t force myself to ignore them.

At this point, even if I could, there wasn’t anything I could do anyway. Everybody that was going to recover was already out of danger, so I was mostly just doing regular welfare checks.

“I appreciate the offer, but no. I have a lot of other people to check in on. I’ll stop somewhere to eat once I’ve finished up with that,” I said politely up to her, although my growling stomach may have betrayed me. There was so much going on in town that I was skipping breakfast just to keep up, but I still made sure to eat whenever I had the chance.

“Keeping your own strength up is also an important part of taking care of people. It will only take a moment to eat,” she retorted, seemingly reading my mind.

She was right, but I had my own reasons for wanting to move on quickly, even aside from being busy. She had been incredibly kind to me since she recovered and I normally enjoyed her company when we saw each other elsewhere around town, but my eyes kept being drawn to the empty spot at the table that she was offering me. She had lost her partner in the attack.

He had apparently been brought in with her on that night, but someone else had taken care of him while I handled her. I remember looking at him and thinking about how his condition was less dire than hers. I had chosen to save her instead of him.

It was probably selfish of me to be so self-conscious about it, but I couldn’t help it. The fact that she was offering me that space only made it worse. It was like the empty space was radiating hatred directly at me.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to eat soon enough. For now, just let me check on how it’s healing,” I said quickly, moving straight up to her.

She seemed to accept that as a response and held her arm out to me. I deftly unwrapped the bandages and turned her arm over in my hands, inspecting the wound. It was healing nicely. There were still the remnants of scabbing, but there was no seepage.

“Alright, it looks fine. Are you having any problems with it?”

“Well, nothing physical. It's still sore, but the pain is getting better each day. The biggest problem is that I keep forgetting it’s not there anymore,” she chuckled, the edge in her voice betraying her worry.

I chuckled back awkwardly.

“That’ll only get better with time unfortunately. As for the pain,” I said, reaching into the pouch I was carrying over my shoulder and pulling out a small bundle of cloth. “I’ve got some more Athim root for you. Same deal as before, just mash it into a paste and apply it to your arm to help relieve the pain, but don’t use it too often. At this point, the best thing for the wound is fresh air, so try to keep it uncovered as much as possible.”

I handed it off and quickly turned to leave.

“Thank you very much Mili. Say hello to Kelaren for me!”

“Will do,” I called out over my shoulder as I made my way out the door.

One visit down, a dozen more to go.

--- --- ---

I stumbled back into Kelaren’s clinic a few hours later, exhausted and starving.

“I’m back,” I called out when I didn’t see her in the front room. She must have been in her study.

“Mili? Come back here and give your report,” I heard her respond, confirming that I was right. I pushed through the curtain she had hanging in the door frame. She was hunched over her workbench against a wall of drawers filled with the ingredients she used to make her remedies.

Dad flashed through my mind.

We lived out of our wagon for pretty much my entire life, so his workspace was notably smaller than hers, but otherwise it was the exact same. The image of her working was just like I had seen him spend so many evenings, all the way down to their postures. I had spent a month working with her, so I should have been used to it by now, but it still caught me off guard whenever I came in.

“Spit it out already girl. Or haven’t you heard. I’m an ‘Old Lady’ now. I don’t have the time to wait around like you do,” she said without looking up from what she was working on. There was a bitterness behind her words, but it wasn’t malicious. When I first met her, I thought her short nature was because of everything going on during the attack, but it turns out she was just like that.

If I kept her waiting much longer, it might make trouble though.

“No major irregularities. Kethmi’s condition was good, although she said she was still struggling with the pain a little so I gave her four doses of Athim. Tamtern and Dersen were both better than yesterday, although it seems like the infection is still there so I changed their bandages and gave them each 2 doses of your remedy. Medhim was…”

I kept going like that, giving a detailed report of each patient's condition and what resources I used for them. Luckily, like I said, everything was going along well. It had now been days since anything major changed and everyone was slowly but steadily recovering.

The only problem was the infection.

We’d found out that a particular blend of Melt, a flower from the Helefiran that helped soothe fevers and stop infections, and some kind of special salve that Kelaren had imported from the inner cities of the Empire could help, although it was still incredibly limited. Neither did anything on their own, but something about the combination stopped the infection from getting worse, and we were starting to see people recovering slowly, but it was incredibly slow progress. The longer they were in recovery, the higher the chance of some kind of relapse, so we were still trying to refine and perfect the treatment.

Pretty much every moment we weren’t spending tending to people directly, we spent brainstorming new possibilities, but since we found that particular combination, we hadn’t made any real progress.

Another thing to add to the list of frustrations that were slowly building up.

“That’s good to hear,” Kelaren said, looking up from the table for the first time to stretch her arms outward and twist her back around. Her spine crackled as she moved.

“Now… are you going to stick around and help me here, or are you going off to tend to that thing?”

That was the first time since I entered that I really heard disdain in her voice, but it wasn’t new when it came to this topic. I did my best to put on a smile and nod, ignoring her antagonism.

“I’m going to swing by Guisen’s house and check in on everything there. I’ll also grab something to eat, and then I’ll come back here. It shouldn’t be more than a few hours.”

“That’s a few hours you’re wasting when you could be staying here and helping people who actually need it.”

“Given the progress we’ve made here recently - or lack of progress, I should say - I have a better chance at helping by doing almost anything else,” I said, accidentally letting my pent up frustration seep through into my words.

“Watch yourself girl. We don’t help people to satisfy our own egos. We do it in service to the Light and all it has given us.”

That was something else that took some getting used to in Anghelen. Dad had warned me that the people in the Empire had a vicious obsession with “the Light,” but I had honestly underestimated it. It was more common than not to have conversations where it was brought up in some way or another. The weirdest part was that even after a month here, I’m really not even sure what the Light is.

Villagers offer up thanks to it when something good happens, ask it for mercy when bad things happen, and, most importantly, talk about doing things in service to it. No matter how small the task.

And yet, whenever I asked for an explanation of what it was, I got no clear answers.

The Magora have something similar with Magru’Tarn, the Heart of the World. The massive mountain at the center of the Helefiran which they offer up thanks and pleas of mercy to in a very similar way to the Angheleners and the Light, but it isn’t some abstract concept. If I asked someone to explain what Magru’Tarn was, they could point to it and tell me a story about why it was important.

It’s the center of the world. It’s where life originated from. An ancient warrior spilled their blood there and blessed it to protect the Magora. The gods that created the world hid ancient secrets in the tunnels deep below it.

Everywhere you went, people had different stories about why it was important and some of them even conflicted so there was no way to tell what was true and what wasn’t, but they all at least had stories. I once spent an entire afternoon with Kelaren just asking her questions about what it was, but only got a list of things it wasn’t. Apparently, it wasn’t the sun, a god, or a spirit, but that was all I got. The only thing she could say about it was that it deserved our reverence. It was the same no matter who I asked.

I had long since stopped asking questions.

“I’ll see you later tonight Kelaren.”

“Mmph,” she grunted, crouching back over the workbench.

--- --- ---

“Hi Mili!”

“How’s it going Mili?”

“Are you done with work for the day?”

“Come on inside, we’ve got a fresh bowl of stew with your name on it.”

As I walked down the street, just trying to make it to the edge of town where Guisen lived, I was called out to by nearly every person that saw me. Anghelen wasn’t a particularly large town and I had apparently made a pretty big impact during the attack, so nearly everyone knew about me by now.

It was… odd. Dark traders were usually very heavily shunned in Anghelen. We were expected to come in, sell what we had, and then get out while keeping our heads down. Every time that I had come through here with dad, it had been the same treatment. But now, I couldn’t walk two feet without someone offering me a place at their hearth to warm up.

The first few days after the attack, that was exactly how it was, but Anghelen was tight knit. Everyone knew someone that I had helped during the attack, so I guess that after a while my name had spread around and I had earned my place in their eyes.

I wish I could say that it was nice, but it honestly annoyed me more than anything.

Everyone was polite, but it seemed like it was only on the surface. They’d offer food, shelter, company, but there was this constant energy that said they knew something I didn’t. If I had to explain it, it was like they were ignoring the fact that I was an outsider. They’d talk about people or things from the town that I had no context for, and if I asked about it they’d just give vague excuses or dismissals instead of actually explaining. It was a bit like how they talked about the light.

I don’t think it was on purpose. I think that they just weren’t used to outsiders, but it was still off-putting. Dad taught me to be polite, so I couldn’t just ignore them, but it was exhausting to have to have a dozen conversations like that when I was just going from one place to another. I kept my answers short and to the point, careful to make it clear that I had somewhere else to be.

Luckily, I wouldn’t be staying here much longer.

I had only stuck around in the first place because there were people in need. I felt compelled to stay and heal those that I could, but now there were hardly any left. Part of me wanted to stick around until we found a permanent cure to the infections, but with that seeming more and more impossible as the days went on, I didn’t know how much longer it would keep me here.

There were only three things that were still unresolved. Once they were sorted out, I could leave without any second thoughts.

I pushed open the door to Guisen’s cottage. It was larger than most in town with multiple distinct rooms, and although it was heavily damaged in the attack, it was still livable. The door was destroyed and a large hole was made in the wall next to it, but it wasn’t enough to make the house dangerous. The door was easy enough to fix and Guisen managed to put some boards up over the hole to keep it from being too drafty. He probably could have found a building on the eastern side of town to share with somebody, but he had insisted on staying here and making it work.

In the main room, Guisen was boiling a stew over the hearth with the help of Makat, the young Magora boy I had brought into town with me on the night of the attack. I was in their village treating him and a few others that had been injured in a hunting accident. When the group of us fled the village, I had carried him with me all the way here, but I got separated from the rest of them before I ran into Nephern and Sterthen. He had actually made it through the attack unscathed, but his injuries from the hunting accident were fairly severe so he was still recovering.

Luckily, during the attack, his presence in the infirmary had gone mostly unnoticed. Once everything settled down, I talked with Guisen and he reluctantly agreed to watch over him until we could find a way to get him back home, so I snuck him out here. Later on, Kelaren sent someone to fetch me from Guisen’s house and saw him. It caused a huge uproar, but at that point my good favor within the town was established and they agreed to let him stay so long as he kept out of sight.

The rest of the town showed no interest in his presence, but Guisen and Paran had actually grown quite fond of him. It was a little awkward for them when I wasn’t there to translate, but they had managed.

He wasn’t actually one of the unresolved matters I mentioned earlier. For the time being, he was safe here. As soon as I got around to leaving Anghelen I would take him with me. He was too young and injured to send back on his own, but we should have no issues if we are together. He wanted to get back as soon as possible and I wanted to help him, but we both knew that it probably wouldn’t be that easy.

The attack was sudden and violent and I hadn’t waited around to see if anyone survived. There was a good chance that we’d find the village completely gone. If that was the case, I’d travel with him until we found someone to take him in.

I think we were both hesitant to face that possibility.

“Guisen. Rangka,” Makat said in heavily accented Ang Perelan, bringing over a tray of chopped rangka root to add to the stew. Guisen took it and started shovelling it into the pot.

“Thank you Makat. Go and set the table. It will be ready soon,” he responded, pointing over to the pile of dishes on the counter. Makat nodded and walked past Paran, who was sitting in a rocking chair by the fire with a blanket over her legs, smiling contentedly.

She was the first unresolved matter.

“Welcome back Mili,” she said, smiling over at me.

“Good evening. How are you doing?”

“Absolutely famished,” she said with a chuckle, swinging forward and swatting Guisen on the backside. “But this old man is taking forever with the stew.”

“I told you, it’s nearly done,” he responded, a wide grin on his face.

For their age, the two of them had far more energy than was probably good for them. Looking just at this scene, it would be nearly impossible to tell that Paran had been on her deathbed just a month ago. It made me happy to see them enjoying their second chance.

But it wouldn’t last

I had started giving Paran treatments like I did on the night of the attack. Every few days, I’d give her a once over. They took so much out of me that I wasn’t really able to do more than that without affecting my work elsewhere, but they helped a lot. I had just given her one last night, which was why she seemed so energetic. As time wore on between treatments, she’d slowly get more tired. Usually, just before I gave her a new treatment, she’d barely be able to keep her eyes open.

And, most importantly, the condition of her soul was slowly deteriorating even with my treatments. I was slowing down the process, but it wouldn’t be too long before the treatments wouldn’t be enough to fully bring her back.

I forced that thought away. I just wanted to enjoy watching the two laugh and banter like this whenever I could.

“Alright. Soups on. Everybody grab a bowl. Kene, that means you too,” Guisen said, turning toward the corner of the room where Kene was sitting on a stool, staring out of the hole in the wall through the cracks in the boards. She silently slid down off of the stool and came over to the table where Guisen set down a bowl for her.

She was the second unresolved matter.

After Nephern and Sterthen disappeared into the night, the attack stopped. We could still hear the screeches of the flying creatures and the sounds of fighting, but after a while even that went silent. Once it became clear that something weird was up, we decided to send out a scouting party to try and figure out whether it was safe or not.

I had to go.

The moment that Kene had been taken, I felt that pulling sensation in the back of my mind almost worse than it had ever been. Nephern and Sterthen had saved my life and all that I could think about was that the last thing they had said to me before they left was that they asked me to protect her.

I knew that going out with the scouting party was terribly dangerous, but none of them had come back. If they did happen to find them out there, they’d almost certainly be hurt and someone would have to tend to them. It was a good thing I did.

We found a place littered with bodies from the attackers, but the three of them were nowhere to be seen. We found prints leading off to the west and followed them until midday, but around the time that the tracks started leading into the Helefiran, the guards got antsy. I was ready to push on through, but the moment the trees started to become thin and twisted, they refused to take one step further.

I begged them to push onward, but they refused. The only one that even seemed open to it was Lieutenant Betheren, but even he almost couldn’t be convinced.

Until we heard a sound.

The earth shook, a roaring sound filled the air, and a massive ball of fire erupted up over the trees in the distance.

The rest of the guards refused to move, but that seemed to be enough to push Betheren into action. It seemed like the cause of it had to be close, given how loud and massive the flames were, but we ran for nearly 45 minutes before we found it.

It was a camp of some sort. Even now, I’m really not sure what that place was. It didn’t look like a Magora village. It was all tents and odd metal structures, but there was nobody there. The structures looked like the metal bird I had found a couple of weeks ago and sold to Girin, but I had no clue how the two connected other than a vague resemblance.

On the far end of the camp there was some sort of pyre. It was nearly 30 feet tall and slowly burning away. The smell of burning flesh that it gave off was unmistakable, so it had to be a pyre, but what for? We didn’t get close enough to investigate, but we did find Kene and Nephern there.

Kene was in really bad shape, but I got there just in time. Without even thinking, I immediately started using my powers, even though I was right in front of Betheren. Afterwards he said he shared my gratitude toward the two of them so he wouldn’t tell anyone, but there was no telling how long that would last.

Once I had her stable, I tried to help Nephern but…

...it was too late.

She was gone, and despite looking everywhere in the camp we couldn’t find Sterthen’s body either. We had managed to get Kene back, but that didn’t really feel like much in that moment.

Since then, she had made a full recovery, at least physically. She doesn’t talk much now. She’s able to. She just doesn’t. It reminds me of the story dad told me about how I was after the first time I used my powers, but that doesn’t really help. He said that I just slowly got better on my own, so I guess the only thing left to do was to wait.

Me and Guisen had talked about it and for now, he and Paran would look after her like they were doing for Makat. He made the same promise to the two of them as I had and he was intent on keeping it. The only problem was that there was no telling how long he’d last, especially once Paran passed. The big problem was what would happen after that.

She wasn’t welcome anywhere in town. In fact, in discussions about finding her a more permanent home, it seemed like the villagers of Anghelen were more upset by her presence than by Makat’s. Despite the fact that, as far as I could tell, Nephern and Sterthen had single handedly saved Anghelen, they were practically unmentioned in town. Everyone seemed dead set on forgetting they ever existed. To make it worse, the few people that were talking about them only said cruel things. It mostly came out of Sun Lord Guinang, but I occasionally heard other guards do the same. Even Kelaren.

Just thinking about it made me furious.

This town owed their lives to them, but all they could do was sneer down at them.

Just like so many other thighs, I tried asking around town about why they were so hated, but nobody could give me a straight answer. The only person who came close was Guisen, but even he didn’t give me a clear answer. They had done something bad a long time ago and been exiled from the Empire for it which was why they were living out in the forest. I tried arguing with him about how that shouldn’t matter, how they should be remembered as heroes because they were, but he started clamming up and refused to talk about it.

Even telling you all of this right now, I can barely contain myself. That’s the other reason I want to leave this place. While most of the people here were good enough on their own, I could never forgive them for acting this way.

Anyway, the point is that Kene can’t stay here long term. I told Guisen about Girin and how he seemed like he might be willing to help her find somewhere new, but he said that was likely no good. Kene’s blood was tainted. The banishment that Nephern and Sterthen faced applied to her too.

So that only gives us one option. I’d try and find her somewhere that she could live out in the Helefiran.

The people in Anghelen seem to view the forest as this evil, treacherous place where nothing can survive, but that’s really not true. Sure, it might be more dangerous than inside of the Empire’s territory, but there were whole villages and towns out there just like Anghelen.

The main problem would be finding somewhere that would accept a Sun Eater though. While it would definitely be possible, it might take some time, so the current plan for Kene is to have her travel with me and Makat until the right place shows up. I honestly wish that I could keep her with me for good, but I was barely an adult myself. She needed someone that knew better.

“Mmmm. This stew is great Guisen,” I said enthusiastically. I was trying to put on a show to coax Kene into talking about something, even if it was as simple as food. It probably came out sounding a bit forced, but as the stew hit my empty stomach and warmed me from the inside out, the “mmmmm” was genuine.

However, she just looked blankly down and continued eating. It was worth a try, but this wasn’t my strong suit. I could fix people’s bodies, but dad always said that was only half of recovery. The other half was all mental, and I had no special powers to help with that. At least not for now. According to his old stories, there were ways that people with power like mine could help, but I still needed to figure them out on my own.

“So, Guisen. Any updates around here,” I asked quickly, trying to get something else to occupy my mind.

“Not really. I thought I heard some noise coming from the back awhile ago, but when I went in to check they were still asleep.”

Which brings us to the third unresolved matter, the person in the back room of Guisen’s house.

Kene and Nephern weren’t the only people we found at the camp.

Laying next to them, with one arm draped over Kene, was some kind of giant. Their body was in absolute shambles. They had been wearing white armor at one point, but it was so burnt and twisted that it looked all black. They also had a helmet that seemed like it was meant to cover their whole head, but a massive chunk was taken out of one side. Whatever took that chunk out also gouged a huge trench in the head beneath.

They had a huge wound starting just above their eye and going up just past their hairline. When I first found them, there was even a chunk of their skull missing and I could see their brain underneath.

But, through some kind of miracle, they were still alive.

Once Kene was taken care of and I realized that Neph was gone, I used my powers on them. Their soul was unlike anything I had ever seen. It didn’t have the same golden light that most peoples’ do. It was a mottled silver and black and looked more like a transparent clay figure with motes of light swimming in it than a bundle of threads.

At first, they seemed very responsive and started recovering rapidly before my eyes, although that did eventually slow down. I was able to stabilize them before we had to move on, but they still hadn’t woken up. Betheren was very apprehensive about bringing them back at first, but I insisted and he eventually relented.

I had no clue what this creature was, but they clearly went down fighting right beside Nephern. The way they were partially draped over Kene made it seem like they were protecting her. I couldn’t be sure, but I had a gut feeling that was the case.

I was giving them treatment nearly daily, much like I was for Paran. It was hard to tell with how different this creature’s soul was to everyone else’s, but it seemed like they were making a steady recovery. If they were going to wake up, it would be soon. There were too many uncertainties to know whether that would happen, but I was optimistic.

In fact, I should go back and check on them now.

“Thank you once again for the meal Guisen,” I said, standing up from the table. After taking a moment to clean up after myself I started heading to the back room.

I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

“Good afternoon Mr. Giant. It’s time to wake up…” I said out loud as I went to set my satchel down in the corner and let the door swing closed behind me, although I wasn’t really expecting an answer. I put it down and looked up toward the empty bed in the corner.

Wait. Empty?

I heard the door thump against the frame behind me and I felt something sharp press against my throat.

“/hu ɑɹ ju and wɛɹ am aɪ/”