Chapter 49: Healer Oreksei

Initially having followed the direction in which Hima turned her head before falling silent again, Miro continued to stare out the window. There was a hollow down the length of his sternum where he felt as though he’d been stabbed with a hot dagger. A flame came to his right hand but he pulled it back into his fist.

“Miro …” Peteri said but it was too late – grinding his teeth, Miro already stormed out of the house, his strides long and purposeful. He was aware of Peteri, who followed him but respectfully gave Miro space, and of the partially-formed fireball that clutched to the hand that hung stiffly at Miro’s side. The moment he sighted the black vein moving through the field he hurled the fireball at it, missing again and being greeted with the message

Debuff: Mother’s Blood

which he waved off with a curse.

Walking up directly to the black river, his toe a mere inch from its edge, he stared down into the darkness, listening. It wasn’t long before he too heard a murmur, a rustling that came from within his own mind, and then also felt the pull that it exerted on him, not on his body, but on the fiery essence within him that was bursting to get out.

He unleashed the rest of his fireballs into the dark substance, depleting his mana. The black river rippled and bristled in each direction as it absorbed the fireballs and Miro thought he could hear, hardly above the level of his perception, the sound of malevolent annoyance coming from the Deep Scar Mountains. Peteri must have heard it too, since he turned his head east and listened to the wind for a few moments before looking back at Miro with troubled eyes.

Miro, whose rage proved deeper than his mana supply, turned to stare down into the blackness again, which continued to whisper at him with renewed frigidity.

“I will find you, whatever you are,” Miro said with his jaw clenched, “And I will end you.”

There was nothing else he could do here. His fingers and knuckles ached with an urge that couldn’t be satisfied for another half hour, so he walked back to the house, Peteri following again while giving him space, and then Miro threw one last look at the Mountains before he stepped back inside.

Daimir was still at Hima’s bedside, looking to Miro as dutiful as if she had been his own flesh and blood, a thought that softened something inside him and made it easier to breathe. The empty pot stood beside the bed and Hima looked for the time being to just be sleeping, though her pallid face revealed that there was something terribly wrong.

None of them spoke until Nydra returned. Instead, they spent their time waiting under a heavy silence that loomed so large it might as well have been a fourth person in that room. Then the sound of approaching hoofbeats knocked Miro out of his stupor and he went out to greet the tired horses, as well as Nydra, Olbav, and a robed figure who was presumably this Healer Oreksei – an elder who was composed entirely of long features, from their height to their nose and even down to their spindly fingers.

“Right this way, Healer,” Olbav said with a bow, gesturing with her hand past Miro. The Healer’s graying hair reached just past their ears and partially covered the light blue crescent moon tattoo on their brown creased forehead. They carried no satchel, but Miro thought he could see some particular bulkiness to their thick robe, which was the same colour as their tattoo, covered with intricate white needlework, and which reached down almost all the way to the ground. Healer Oreksei’s bare face did not strike Miro as particularly kind, and the Healer did not even look in Miro’s direction as they passed into the house.

Miro followed Healer Oreksei to the bedroom, where upon the entry of the Healer both Daimir and Peteri gave them a bow, the farmer almost bending in half, while the archer merely dipped his chin.

“Ah,” Oreksei said, their voice sounding like a distant waterfall, and then confirmed what Miro had suspected, pulling out a vile from within one pocket within their robe and a sprig of purple leaves from a pocket on the other side. They un-stoppered the vial, pressed the leaves against its glass mouth and then ran them across Hima’s forehead, from temple to temple. Hima took a deep sucking breath, her chest rising, and then returned to her shallow, barely-noticeable breaths.

“I can see that she has touched that vile stuff,” Oreksei said finally.

“Didn’t need a Healer to tell us that,” Miro grumbled before receiving a jab in the ribs from Nydra. His 2 Intellect points kept him from saying it loudly but failed to prevent him from speaking at all, though Oreksei ignored him.

The Healer lifted up Hima’s left hand, and then her right, scrutinizing them both, but running a velvety gloved finger along the length of Hima’s palm and down to her wrist. “I see these cases occasionally,” they said, “though few this bad, usually a finger or two, and mostly from the foolish and the curious. Though this one does not strike me as the former.”

“She said she heard the substance speak to her,” Miro said.

“Did she now?” The Healer appeared genuinely interested as they loomed over Hima once more, seamlessly sliding a tiny jar of crystalline powder from within their robe, and sprinkling some of it over Hima’s throat after having gently rolled down the high, close-fitting collar of her shirt.

Miro’s village was not significant enough even for Healers to bother with, death and illness coming unabated most of the time, so this was his first time seeing one work. The ease with which they procured the various potions from within their robes both impressed Miro and also made him wonder if this was all just a sham that had no rhyme or reason behind it.

The Healer recited some kind of incantation under their breath and the dust they sprinkled on Hima’s throat began to glow a faint blue before they brushed it away and rolled Hima’s collar back up.

“Your friend does not seem to know much about where she’d come from,” Oreksei said and Miro was about to ask how they knew but was cut off. “She’s strong. I can give her something to buy her some more time, but I’m afraid there’s little that can be done beyond that.”

Blackness pressed in around Miro’s vision, but he blocked it out and snapped, “Then we’ll find a doctor who’ll save her.”

The Healer laughed humourlessly. “The ones you think of as ‘doctors’? The nearest one would likely be in Utha. Even with my intervention, she would not last the journey there, and in any case, I doubt they would be able to help her either.”

“Why would a doctor not be able to help her?” Nydra asked before Miro managed to make his own protest.

“This black river? It is borne of a magic that resides in the mountains. An old magic, before the time of the mages.” Healer Oreksei dabbed a finger inside a small bottle that Miro didn’t even notice them open and traced with it in the air a symbol that seemed oddly familiar. “Your doctors may have some understanding of the physical body but they are blind on matters where the human eye cannot reach. That is where the coldness of this dark magic attacks – those deep parts of us unreachable by those who would not see them. There is a chance that a fire mage’s magic could thaw the affliction and I believe we may be in the presence of one.”

With Oreksei’s eyes on him, Miro stammered. “How did you –”

“Never mind that,” Oreksei continued. “Your mage power may be her only chance, if you’re strong enough.”

“I’m only Level 5,” Miro lied.

Healer Oreksei eyed him dubiously. “Level 5 is precisely the level at which you should be comfortably starting to use such spells. Come, try, you must try.”

Oreksei held out their arm in a welcoming gesture and Miro looked at it hanging in mid-air. There was no sense of going through the charade of trying, which would have resulted in him either burning Hima or the house.

“I can’t,” Miro said finally, his eyes unable to meet the Healer’s. “I have a debuff.”

“A debuff?” Oreksei said, not sounding terribly surprised. “Hmm.” The Healer closed their eyes, the sound of their humming vibrating in their throat for a long minute until they opened them again and said, “I may know someone who might help you with that.”