Ansera woke up.

She hadn’t really expected to. She knew saktiin’s progression better than most and she was well into the stage where any day, any moment, could be her last.

She’d nursed more than half the village through it, after all. The survivors were crippled but alive; she wasn’t certain if they were the lucky ones or not. Far too many were dead. The best and the brightest, usually.

Nothing worked against saktiin.

She’d hoped it would miss her tiny little village, but the plague struck them right after they heard the news that the Meadows Quarantine was lifted. It was good to not be quarantined, but it was depressing to know that it was because the quarantine failed.

Ansera blinked sleepily. She felt better than she had in a long time. She felt less drained. It was almost like she had mana again, but that was impossible. Even if she were actually recovering from saktiin, it destroyed the mana pathways. She’d never be able to heal again.

“Don’t move.” A deep, unknown, but somehow familiar voice told her. “If you can heal yourself, start with your head. It’s clear; I’m working on your torso right now. It’s good that you’re awake; there are some of these I didn’t want to touch without a healer.”

“What?” Ansera turned her head towards the voice. There was a man sitting next to her. At least, she thought he was a man; he seemed to be cityfolk of some sort, with dyed hair and something odd about his eyes. You could never tell with cityfolk.

“Whatever the hell this manufactured disease is, it creates some nasty nodules near your nerves. I’m destroying them as fast as I can, but there’s a lot of damage left behind. You said you were a healer, right?”

Ansera struggled to keep up with the man’s statement. It wasn’t that what he was saying was difficult to understand; in fact, she knew about the nodes. They were the second sign of saktiin, after the reduction in available mana. They had permanent implications for the survivors beyond what they meant for mana capacity.

The unbelievable part was that he was destroying them. She’d heard about surgeries done in the early days of the disease; they helped, but only until the nodules came back. She’d never heard of anyone who could destroy them without cutting someone open, yet she could feel his mana moving into her; where it went, something changed.

Wait. One of the improvements noted was a temporary return of mana. Was that why she felt like she had mana?

Ansera reached for her mana. “Anodyne of years, health’s own source, repair the harm and mend the broken…”

It was a long spellchant, but it was one she could direct without gestures; all it took was the chant and some concentration. It was only good for injury, but “damage left behind” sounded like injury.

Most of her spells were only good for injuries anyway. She did have a chant that helped against illnesses, but it was best against winter weakness. It had proven essentially useless against saktiin.

Ansera kept chanting. Her mana was thicker and less responsive than she was used to. She was also pretty confident she had less of it. Being able to cast at all was worth it; she’d expected to be manaless.

Well, she’d really expected to die. That was what healers did when they caught saktiin.

The man didn’t speak again until Ansera stopped chanting, out of mana to fuel her healing. He was still going; whatever he was doing must be less costly than healing. “So what do you know about this disease? What did you call it, saktiin?”

It must also be less difficult. He was able to both cast chantlessly and talk to her while casting; that was impressive. Of course, he was also somehow healing saktiin; that dwarfed the sheer power required to cast chantlessly.

She wondered where he’d hidden himself away; she’d assumed he was from the Mouth of the Morning but he couldn’t be. She’d have heard of a powerful healer like him if he were that close; he had to have been hiding somewhere. Of course, he’d also know about saktiin if he were in the Mouth; it’d made it into the city.

“Yes. Saktiin, manadeath. Even if you live, you’re forever manaless. It started in Metton and quickly spread to all of the Meadows. The Morning Guard walled off the Meadows.” She swallowed. Her throat was tight and her mouth was dry; saktiin was a terrible curse. “Three weeks ago, we heard the quarantine was lifted. Travelers said it was from lack of guards, but I don’t see how that’s possible. We were safe, we thought. It missed us. And that’s when it started.”

Why was her face wet?

Ansera talked Serenity into curing the people left in the remainder of her village, but she didn’t talk him into trying to cure her world or even the rest of the Meadows. The people of the village were there, then gone again, as far as Serenity was concerned; he killed the invading disease then Ansera healed them. The only one he thought he would remember was Ansera herself, and even then she was just a passing acquaintance.

It was better that way.

Serenity wasn’t about to tell her that her time was past, but he knew it was. He didn’t know if his efforts would change anything; since the abundant mana was Time, he thought they might help. That these people might be real.

That didn’t mean he could fix everything. The Time effect was only on the Forest of Lost Regrets, which seemed to be a portion of the Meadows centered on the city of Metton. From what Ansera said, Metton wasn’t even the largest city in the Meadows, but it was where the saktiin plague started.

This was clearly a high mana area, but Serenity didn’t think it was a dungeon. It was probably one of the other things that could happen at a ley line nexus, instead. Something that the regret for the events of the saktiin plague turned into a strange place pulled partly out of its own Time.

Serenity left Ansera with a warning about how saktiin worked and that it could spread to a healer if they healed someone with the plague and didn’t have someone on hand who could kill it. He didn’t think it would spread from someone who’d recovered unless they were touched by magic, but that meant she’d still have to be careful.

It was possible she had some resistance now, but she wasn’t likely to be immune. The same was true of the other survivors in the village.

It bothered Serenity that they seemed to have no destructive healers at all. There were so many things that needed to be destroyed, but they simply accepted infections, illnesses, and cancer as a normal part of life rather than something to be healed. It was an attitude foreign to Serenity, but he’d seen it before.

In some ways, the best part of the stop was that he was able to see a map of what Ansera called “the Morning Lands”. It was centered on Mornmot, which it called the Mouth of the Morning, and ran more or less along the River or Morning. Lowpeak wasn’t even on the map, but Metton was.

The map was inaccurate but good enough that Serenity could see that there was a paved route he could follow out of the Meadows that would be nearly as direct as simply heading cross-country. He could even manage to avoid any other small villages, which was a plus.

All he needed to do was follow it to the edge of the Time effect then figure out how to return to his own time.

The trek out from the nameless village was monotonous but easy. He followed the planned route and saw nothing of note other than sheep.

Time still wasn’t moving in his present as far as he could tell, but that didn’t mean he’d make it back to the same spot in Time. He’d try; that was the best he could do.

Two days after leaving Ansera’s village, Serenity saw something strange ahead of himself. A fire wolf - literally a wolf that seemed to be on fire - was attacking one of the relatively common sheep. Normally, this would result in a meal for the wolf, but it wasn’t working out that way.

The sheep didn’t seem to even realize the wolf was there; each attack from the wolf went right through the sheep.

Any clues, Aide?

There is a diffraction pattern in the Time surrounding the wolf. It is less than what we saw at the edge between the forest and the meadow.

Can you make these diffraction patterns visible to me? Not overwhelming but visible?

I will need to restrict the information provided but I believe I can apply a distortion effect to give a visible representation of the presence of a diffraction pattern.

Serenity nodded, still thinking about the wolf. He didn’t want to fight it if he didn’t have to; he didn’t know if the wolf had a pack or not, and running into more wolves unexpectedly would be unpleasant.

At least, it would be unpleasant if they could get at him. He wasn’t certain why this one couldn’t hit the sheep; were they simply in different times even though the wolf could see the sheep?

Which time am I in?

It is difficult to say. I do not understand this shifting in Time; the wolf should not see the sheep if they are in different Times, the same way the sheep cannot see the wolf.

About half of all Time magic is bullshit. Stuff that works but shouldn’t. The whole thing Rissa has about the Timestream is like that, this is just another example. It’s a damn good thing that seeing through Time is easier than manipulating Time or we’d have some real messes. And I’d probably be dead several times over.

Actually, that’s probably part of what’s going on. The monster is being affected by the Time magic to see through Time, but the sheep isn’t. And the wolf isn’t being affected enough to actually interact with the sheep. I bet it’s not able to interact with anything in either time.

I bet it’s why monsters were so scarce near the edge. If they can fall through a crack in broken Time but not get back out, many will eventually learn to leave this area alone; those that don’t learn would die of starvation.

I was able to work with Ansera, but I bet that’s from my Unbound Skill. It prevented me from being restricted from working with what I can see. It’s what I’m counting on to get me out of here when we get to the edge of the Time-affected area.

I know.

Serenity chuckled at Aide’s short, almost irritated response. He was saying something Aide knew; he couldn’t blame Aide for being annoyed at the repetition. Unlike Serenity, Aide didn’t forget things.

I’d better avoid the wolf. Chances are good that it and its pack would be able to interact with me. A downside to being Unbound but it’s still very worth it.

Serenity swung wide around the fiery wolf, leaving the road to make space. He didn’t see any sign of a pack with the wolf and the wolf stayed fixated on the sheep it couldn’t hurt, so Serenity only lost a few minutes by being careful.

It was almost certainly alone, which meant it wasn’t a real threat, but there was also nothing to gain by fighting it.