The day after Amez was on his way to his workshop as usual. Or mostly as usual that is, except for a little extra sleepiness as he’d not gone to bed when he was supposed to. Damned brother of mine sucking me in to his projects! Amez grumbled tiredly inside his head.

As he came within site of his shop he looked at it. He was immediately confused. First he tried blinking with his eyes. Second he tried rubbing his eyes of their tiredness. Maybe he didn’t see correctly. However, as he continued to look and came just a little closer, he could not just see it but also hear it: Amez’ shop was shaking; the building’s roof and walls very slightly creaking with pain. What is going on? Amez thought, and imagined the worst – some wizards or witches were after Rum, and they were now carrying out and all-out battle inside his shop. He began jogging towards it.

As he approached he saw a young man stand outside of it. The man’s face was beautiful in a firm masculine kind of way, but carried a hard expression. Assisting the man’s beauty was a curled half-long blond hair, a chin and cheeks bearing the smoothest of shaves, and a jaw so handsome it probably had its own mistresses. The man wore the finest of shirts and pants, jewelry on his neck and fingers, an expensive gold and red cape hanging from his shoulders. On either side of the young man stood two armored guards in gold-painted scale- and plate armor, armed with hand-crossbows at their sides, short-swords for stabbing, and a large blade for fencing and cutting. Amez immediately knew who this was, and he dreaded the conversation ahead. Ceasing his jogging, he almost nonchalantly walked up to the man, who noticed him just after he stopped the jog.

“Amez The Tattooist?” he questioned, an army disciplined briefness to his delivery.

“Yeah. Yeah that’s me.” Amez wanted to sigh but held it in. He needed to appear in control of the situation, at least a little.

“May I ask why your shop is shaking so?”

“I–I... “ Amez paused for a moment, trying to figure out a good response. “I think I might know the reason.”

“You do? Well I’m starting to fear it might come down soon, I’ve been standing here for at least a quarter of an hour, and the building has been shaking half of that time at least.”

“And I’m very sorry about being late!” Amez hurriedly replied. “I’ll go check out the situation right away. The building won’t come down, Master Kash! It’s just a minor issue.” Amez walked like nothing at all was wrong with the world as he approached his shop door, opening the front, and then quickly closing it behind himself. Strangely enough, this was the exact time that the building stopped shaking. Amez paused for a moment, unsure what it might mean. But as the moment passed, he rushed over to the bedroom door, swinging it open with force.

A very unexpected site met Amez: Rum was lying on top of his bed, fully clothed, wheezing. Even stranger still, three very old ladies were variably lying on top of him, hugging him, one crying, one even making a brief laugh. His eyes going back and forth between all the four people on the bed, Amez just exclaimed: “WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!?”

Rum didn’t immediately reply, instead he just continued wheezing for a few good seconds. Amez took a single step closer to the bed, but otherwise remained patient for Rum to calm down his breathing, though the intensity in Amez’ face lingered.

“I was just–” Rum breathed some more, his breath finally calming down. Rum tried and failed to look at Amez, instead he sort-of looked at him with one eye from a weird head angle, almost like he was simultaneously intoxicated and paralyzed. “I was just helping these women with their–” and he waited a second, looking hazy and swallowing his own spit, before continuing: “–helping them with their mental health.”

“He cured my head!” the previously laughing old woman yelled, happiness and near incredulity on her face. “Are you Amez, his younger brother?”

“Yeees” Amez said slowly, taken aback by the emotions in the air, and feeling his own frustrations taking a step back.

“Well, your brother is a saint! A gift from the gods!” she continued.

“A saint!” added the crying old woman, who hugged Rum’s neck, squeezing his wind pipe.

“Yeah yeah” Rum said through the choking, and patted the old woman on her back. When the woman finally released him, Rum was a little red in his face, and wheezed for a moment again.

“I can’t remember my thoughts being so clear in a decade” mumbled the last woman, who was partially lying on top of Rum, but looking into the ceiling.

“Yeah” Rum said with a sigh. “That’s the intended effect. But ladies, I think Amez possibly has some business with me, so can you all restrain your thanks for now, and give me a moment with my little brother?”

“Okay” the old women said, one after the other, before starting to get out of bed. To Amez’ surprise three other figures he hadn’t yet seen, stepped out of a corner of the room to help the old women up. It was an old man, slightly small and skinny, his face filled with wrinkles and his eyes nearly closed. The old man wore a green beanie, and sucked on a tooth as he stepped past Amez. Following him was a poor-looking younger man, maybe in his early twenties, with a small, rough cut, black beard and an equally rough cut, black half-long hair that also looked thoroughly unwashed. Lastly followed another older lady, about the same age as the ones in the bed, and poor-looking, but this one smiled and even had a tear glistening under her eyes.

“Torrom my lad, you help your grandmother, I help your friend’s grandmother, and my sister can help her friend.”

Together the trio of young and old helped the older women up. One of them groaned in pain, trying to lean in on one leg. Another bent over thoroughly, touching her back in apparent pain, and the last one, the one who’d neither cried nor laughed, coughed severely, looking weak now that she tried to stand.

Rum observed them all as they started moving towards the back door of the shop. When the old man was about to touch the door handle, Rum quietly exclaimed: “Stop” It was not a real order, more of a request for a pause so Rum could speak. “You all look terrible, except you Rhathie, Torrom and Adalas; but the rest of you look absolutely terrible. Since you’re already here, why don’t I fix your bodies as well as your minds? I’m sure Amez can wait a little, this will just take a moment.”

And before Amez could say a thing, Rum got up and out of the bed, apparently having some energy now that he was no longer being choked by an old woman. He stepped up to the trio, looking at the old woman in the back of the line being helped by the young man Torrom. “What is this? A bad back?” The old woman nodded sorrowfully. Rum took a hand to the back and spoke his new words of magic: “Trinity of Healing”. The words were said with focused eyes and mind. Within the next second, an intense green lightshow spewed out from the woman’s back, and her expression went wild with pleasant shock. Mouth was agape, not just from the old woman, but from Torrom too. For several seconds, nobody said a thing, everyone just taking in the magical experience of a magical lightshow that promised wonders.

As it all ended, the woman grabbed her grandson, leaning on him for a second. Then she pulled herself upright, and she stood upright, amazement and wonder in her entire face. She started to breath, heavily. She was the one who’d cried before, and now she cried again, hugging Rum with an immense gratitude.

“Thank–thank for everything!” Rum started to choke again, and behind the woman’s back he hinted for Torrom to make the old woman release him. Torrom almost cried himself as he started gently pulling away his grandmother.

The lightshows that followed for the other women were not as emotional, and neither as awe-inspiring as the first time, but the old women were ecstatic when Rum had cured a bad hip and the early stages of what reminded Rum of tuberculosis. As Rum finally managed to get the three old ladies to walk back home he turned around to Amez, who was looking at Rum with an undecided expression. Rum just walked over to the bed, laying down on it, his head on the pillow looking up at Amez.

“What can I help my little brother with?”

Amez put a hand to his hair, stroking it thinkingly, before deciding to sit down on the bed himself. From between his own hands which rested on his face, searching eyes of incredulity peeked out. As he sat there for a moment, he noticed White Rose standing still in a corner across the bed, having silently watched everything unfolding. Amez thought it incredible how imperceptible ze could be. However, he put ze out of his mind, and in the end his eyes and focus returned to Rum: “You’re a high class healer now?”

“No, I just have a couple of spells that are useful for mental- and physical health. Just a bit of a hobby I suppose. I know some of those people from when I got that spell for Elrith Heart-Piercer, remember? This morning Adalas came by, wondering I could help some friends of his some with the same spell, free of charge of course, and yeah, I cured their dementia. Incredible really, how many old women have dementia. The city should probably look into that issue.”

“Free of charge?” Amez asked, perplexed. “They didn’t pay you for something so... incredible!”

“Pay me? You mean I pay them? No, I didn’t have to pay them this time. This time I got to use the spell for free, and got to confirm some of my minor hypothesis about the spell in the meantime. A very fruitful encounter indeed. Nice people.”

Amez opened his mouth, but closed it again, smiling and shaking his head. Finally, he laughed. “You save people’s lives. Or rather, they’d still be alive if you hadn’t helped them, but you completely transformed their lives for the better right now – and YOU were expecting to have to pay for that!?” He laughed some more, now loudly. “Rum, Rum, Rum my big brother. You need to start valuing your self some more. It’s okay to charge people money for things you are good at.”

“But they don’t have any money!” Rum protested. “How can I charge money to people who have barely enough to get by? Have you ever been to The Raven’s Slum? It’s a pretty horrible place. You’d think Ermos would be a wealthy city and all, but in my travels, I’d rarely see any poverty like what I saw in The Raven’s Slum.”

Amez nodded understandingly. ”Well not all those you help need to have empty purses. You know, maybe if you started to charge people money for – incredible – things like this, then perhaps you’ll be able to move out of your little brother’s shop one day.”

Now it was Rum’s time to smile. “But you know little brother, if I made some money: I’d have to move out of my little brother’s shop one day.”