Blaze pulled back to consider his options. He wanted to heal Priest-Healer Tirina, but that wasn’t actually the reason he came. He’d found out what was affecting her and presumably what was affecting High Priestess Karin.

Tirina, at least, had been deliberately warped physically and mentally by an outside force until she conformed to what that outside force wanted. She was probably then pushed into taking a Path that aligned with the warping. The Path made it especially hard to deal with, but there were ways to cope.

There were ways to break a Path.

The problem with all of them was that they had a tendency to damage the person whose Path was broken. Of course, the warping that Blaze was seeing could easily have exactly the same effect.

It made him wonder if Ekari was in the earlier stages of the problem. He’d never noticed anything, but he wasn’t certain he would. People could handle an amazing amount of damage before they broke, sometimes, and he knew Ekari hadn’t broken. If she was being damaged, she was surely hiding it. The question was whether she was hiding it because of her own pride, the belief that it was normal, or because she was forced to.

It was all too likely that she thought it was normal. People often did. Blaze was fairly confident that his childhood wasn’t what other people would call normal, yet he was still surprised when people admitted they had a different experience than his.

Blaze tried to focus on Tirina. The blurring in his vision was growing worse; he had to decide where he would ride out his harad. He could either use it to help Tirina or he could hurry back to the Visitor’s Palace and tell everyone to stay away from him for a while. Going through harad alone would be very unpleasant, but it would also be safer for everyone if no one needed his help.

On the other hand, healing Tirina ought to be safe enough. It would probably take a few days to break her Path then several more days to get her enough control back to finish without help. He’d have to figure out a way to get a message to Serenity, but that ought to be doable; Ita would probably come when he didn’t show up as expected.

The real question was if he should heal Tirina. Did she want to be healed? He could easily justify checking her without her consent, but breaking her Path was a much larger step. On top of that, if she didn’t actually want to be healed, she might well simply restore the warping he fixed instead of finishing the removal process.

He couldn’t ask her conscious mind since it was warped, but he was already in early harad. At this stage, he had another option, at least with people he was physically touching. People who were potential harad targets. He was limited in other ways, but at least he could ask the most important question.

Blaze projected the question at the unconscious woman. It wasn’t in words; it couldn’t be in words. That wasn’t how this worked. Most diehar didn’t bother to ask; even if they did, it was a different question. Blaze knew he was strange, but it felt right to ask. It always had.

Do you want to be healed? Restored to what you once were, before you were twisted?

It will be hard but you can be more than you are now, more than you are allowed to be.

It was a more complex message than any he’d sent this way before, but it was similar; a message that said what he was offering and what it would cost. In that sense, he was like any diehar who asked permission.

The response was mixed. A sense of contentment and relaxation mixed with a strong dose of resentment that seemed aimed at someone other than Blaze. There was a thread that Blaze recognized, because he felt it himself: the desire to help others. That thread was the only uncomplicated thing in the entire message.

Blaze wasn’t sure resentment was enough to make Path-breaking worthwhile. It might work if he could remove Priest-Healer Tirina from the influence that had originally warped her in the first place, but whatever it was seemed to be common; the fact that it affected both of the higher-Tier Priests he’d dealt with was enough to make Blaze wonder if it was something about the Church itself.

On the other hand, he hadn’t noticed anything like it affecting the acolytes. If it wasn’t the Church, where did it come from? Or did it only start when you were high enough rank?

In that case, Ekari was safe. Blaze was happy about that.

Blaze reluctantly stood up. He wanted to heal Tirina, but he couldn’t do it now. It would be too involved; he’d have to set it up for her to finish and without a strong commitment on her part, he’d have to also pull her out of the aid station. He was certain she’d fight that.

He hoped he’d have another chance.

For now, he had to get out of the aid station in early harad without anyone noticing he was suffering from anything other than mana depletion. Once again, it was a good thing everyone was so busy; no one was likely to look busy and the few people he’d gotten to know other than Tirina were likely to be just as exhausted as she was.

Blaze didn’t remove the spell keeping Tirina asleep; it would fade on its own and be essentially undetectable by the time she woke naturally. She needed the sleep anyway.

He slipped out of the bed, retrieved his pack, and snuck out of her rooms. Blaze felt increasingly disassociated from his body; movement was no longer natural. He had to concentrate on the pieces. In some ways, it was like being drunk, though he knew exactly how much trouble he was having.

He left the door unlocked; letting her assume that she’d forgotten to lock it in her exhaustion seemed better than delaying and fumbling with lockpicks when he was having trouble controlling his fingers.

Once he was a few corridors away, Blaze made sure to stand up mostly straight and not look like he was sneaking. He needed to look exhausted. It was a good thing that the symptoms of exhaustion could be very similar to the symptoms of being drunk. He tried not to react when he passed the corridor leading to the mystery door; he wasn’t going to get to investigate that today, which meant he’d likely never have the chance.

Two orderlies tried to corner Blaze on the way out, but he had to admit he was completely out of mana and so tired he didn’t trust his healing. That was all the explanation they needed before they wished him a “good rest”; he must not be the only one with those issues.

Outside, things seemed to have calmed down. There weren’t many people being brought in.

He also wasn’t the only person who seemed to be heading home. That was a stroke of luck. Blaze waved awkwardly at a few of the others; he didn’t know them at all, but a simple wave should work.

By the time he was a half-dozen buildings from the aid station, he didn’t see anyone else headed in his direction.

Fifteen minutes after that, Blaze reached the service entrance to the Visitors’ Palace. Strangely, there were no guards on the doors; he remembered there being guards when he left.

The doors were locked. Blaze fumbled his lockpicks and dropped them repeatedly. He eventually decided it wasn’t going to work and tucked them away before he knocked.

No one came to the door.

He was sitting next to the door in a half daze when Ekari walked up. “Blaze? Why are you out here?”

Blaze shook his head. “Locked. Too tired, can’t…” He waved a hand at the handle then struggled to his feet. He was pretty sure he only slurred a little as he spoke, but his voice was affected by the same distance as his fingers.

Ekari frowned and quickly unlocked the door, then moved to support him as he went through it. “You shouldn’t overwork yourself so much. Is it really that bad out there?”

Once Ekari’s arm touched him, Blaze knew. Ekari wasn’t unaffected at all; she’d been attacked at least as much as Tirina, though she hadn’t taken a Path that confirmed it. That was part of the difference, but there was more to it. Ekari had fought against it; Ekari was still fighting against it.

It couldn’t have been easy.

“Blaze? Are you sure you’re going to be all right? You don’t seem just tired.”

Blaze blinked. Some time while Ekari helped him walk, they’d reached the common room. A safe place. They were almost to his bedroom when he felt himself ask.

Do you want to be healed? Restored to what you once were, before you were twisted?

It will be hard but you can be more than you are now, more than you are allowed to be.

This time, the response was determination fueled by anger, a fierce positive answer.

Ekari stopped and seemed puzzled. “Did you just say something?”

Harad had its grip tightly on Blaze now, but he tried to stop it. He could heal her afterwards. She wouldn’t even require a broken Path. He felt the world blur around him. He tried to let go, to move away from Ekari, but he had no strength left. He’d fought to get here and this place was safe. This was far enough.

“I’m sorry. I should have told you.” He thought he spoke out loud, but he wasn’t certain.

When Blaze woke up, he was in a bed. It wasn’t his bed, but it took him a moment to realize that.

He realized it wasn’t his bed a moment after he realized he wasn’t in his body. He was in Ekari’s. His memory caught up and he knew exactly what was going on.

Harad.

This wasn’t the first time he’d been in a female body; that was a normal part of diehar training, at least where he grew up. It simply wasn’t his preference; Blaze was male and he liked being male.

He also didn’t like taking over anyone else’s body, especially not Ekari’s, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that until harad ended. In many ways, it was fortunate that Ekari needed healing; handling that would take Blaze’s attention and help speed harad along. Blaze didn’t feel lucky.

Blaze expected that his own body was asleep in his bed; whoever put Ekari in bed had surely put him in bed as well. His body wasn’t going to wake up on its own; there was no separate consciousness to control it, only enough to keep it alive. That was a risk that some diehar chose to take, moving from body to body, temporarily suppressing the consciousnesses of the bodies, but it wasn’t one Blaze wanted. He liked his body; it was his. He’d had it ever since he was born except for harad. Even then, he’d suffered through more than one harad in his own body, especially after he left home.

But then, Blaze was strange. He always had been. If he wanted to transfer, even in harad, there had to be something for him to heal. A condition being required for transfer was common but healing was a very unusual one.

He could feel himself healing Ekari, removing whatever had pushed her away from who she was and into an image it wanted her to be. He was glad that he could use Ekari’s mana for it; she didn’t have as much as Blaze’s body, but she hadn’t drained it twice in a day either.

Something was helping with the healing. It felt like a Path Skill of some sort, but Blaze didn’t recognize it. It was probably Ekari’s, but very few Path Skills would function during harad, so Blaze wasn’t certain what to think about it.