"Those who purposely prolonged their patient's suffering for the sake of mere coins… do not deserve to be called healers. These *Vile Curs* are just greedy beasts pretending to be people. Any such proven infraction from a member of the guild shall be punished by the confiscation of their assets in the guild, as well as a permanent blacklist from our rolls.

Additionally, a meager bounty of one copper coin shall be made widespread with their infractions listed so that all may know them for what they truly were like." - Article 4, section 5 of the charter of the Guild of Healers, circa 459 FP.

"Those motherfucking heartless whoresons!" cursed Aideen vehemently as she checked the condition of the young bedridden girl before her. Magda behind her flinched at her cursing, probably intimidated by her evident anger.

The heavily scarred, thuggish woman had brought Aideen to her modest house while she told her story along the way. The tale she told was a rather sad one, one of misfortune and bad decisions made by her parents that compounded into the mess the woman now had to deal with.

Her family - Aideen had thought that her name was a bit uncommon in these parts from what she learned - were immigrants from the Kingdom of Posuin to the northwest. They had taken a plunge and tried to find a living in new lands during a famine that ravaged the country two decades ago, when Magda was a mere toddler.

Back then, after their arrival in Knallzog, her parents had taken a loan with an old friend of theirs, a healer who had moved there a decade before they did. The sum was reasonable, but said old friend had allowed them to borrow the money with low interest and no collateral.

With the money, her parents had started a fledgling business as merchants, and had made decent headway into paying off their loan. That was, until their old friend passed away five years ago.

He had no descendants and left no will, so his assets passed on to the guild he was part of. This included the debt Magda's parents had with him. The guild was far less understanding and had demanded her parents pay off the rest of the debts posthaste.

They barely made do the past five years, as they paid off the remaining part of the debt in installments. But then misfortune struck just last year. Her family's carriage got into an accident on their way back from a short vacation.

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It was a freak accident. A monster boar had wandered into the road and scared the beasts of burden pulling their carriage. As a result, the carriage fell off the cliffside and broke apart when it dashed against the rocks below.

Both of Magda's parents died instantly during the fall, as they had shielded their daughters with their own bodies. Magda had escaped with lighter injuries, mostly to the right half of her face, but her younger sister Lena was in much worse condition.

When they were rescued, Lena was barely breathing. In her desperation, Magda had screamed at the healer - from the guild her parents' old friend was in - that she would pay anything as long as they saved her sister.

The healer had healed her and Lena somewhat. He was not powerful enough to fully heal them as he was still an apprentice, but it was enough to stabilize Lena's condition at the time. When they returned to Knallgant, the healer's master came to their home.

He had assessed their belongings and claimed on the spot that they had nowhere near enough to afford his services. It was only through much pleading and begging that the healer eventually agreed to partially heal Lena of her injuries.

In exchange, all of their assets were transferred over, and Magda was indentured to work for the guild for ten years. Lena would only be healed fully after she had served her time.

Magda was big and strong, and the guild had her act as one of their hired muscles. She had been made to take part in many of the guild's often extortional activities. She had dirtied her hands with the blood of innocents, all for the sake of her little sister.

In a way, she had been fortunate. The accident that left half her face a mangled, scar-ridden ruin also turned off pretty much everyone. Magda had seen the indignities prettier women - and some handsome men too - were subjected to when they fell into the guild's debt and subsequently its clutches.

She had brought the woman in white to the small home she and her sister lived in - all she could afford with her meager income from side jobs - and had felt a chill in her spine when the woman checked her sleeping sister's condition and then cursed so vehemently.

"Sorry, I lost my temper there. It's not your fault," said Aideen in an apologetic tone to the scarred woman. She couldn't help it. A mere check of the bedridden girl's condition told her much. The healing done on her was very… haphazard. Most of the healing done was merely superficial to make the girl look better than she was.

The girl - no more than a young teenager - must have been in constant agony all this time, yet she had bravely borne the pain and kept it to herself so as not to trouble her sister any further. Aideen felt touched by that, and without a word, she flooded the girl's body with her own mana, and set them to work.

Aideen's own healing started from the inside, as her mana replenished and renewed the old injuries to the girl's organs and bones. Then she worked her way out to the girl's muscles and flesh, skin and hair.

The girl had jerked upright to a seated position in surprise when she was done, as she raised one hand and looked at it in wonderment. Then she looked towards her sister and gasped.

"Big sister! Your face!" she had said. After she had healed the girl, Aideen had tapped Magda on the shoulder, and at the same time, used her magic to polish off what injuries were left on the woman. There wasn't much to deal with, so it barely took her a moment before Magda had looked as if the injury never happened.

She kept her distance and just watched for a while as the baffled sisters looked at each other, then hugged and cried in each other's embrace.