by Ian Rodgers
Gaelin flinched under her diatribe as he came back to his senses, causing him to look down at the floor in shame.
“Wow, suddenly I am glad there are no intelligent bird-people on Erafore,” I said, staring at Gaelin worriedly.
“Wait, what about harpies?” Dora asked me, and I scoffed.
“Eraforian harpies are no more sapient than the ones we fought back in Aerum,” I replied. “Yes, they can say words, but only if you call a parrot’s mimicry ‘speaking.’”
“Fair enough,” the half-orc conceded after thinking it over a bit. Meanwhile, Gaelin continued to suffer under the barrage of angered words courtesy of the Living Saintess.
Once she was finished lambasting him, she took a deep, calming breath. “Now, I know it’s mostly involuntary and instinctual at this point,” she said softly. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. If a dog won’t obey orders, you train it so it will. If a person has an illness, mental or physical, it is to be treated. Now, do you want to be a dog, or a patient?”
“I don’t wanna be a dog,” Gaelin replied despondently, kicking the floor in a childish manner.
“Good. We can work with that,” Shyla said happily with a firm nod of her head. She then stepped out from behind her desk and went over to the door, reopening it.
The swan-ish Healer was still there, cowering slightly, though she relaxed upon seeing it was the Living Saintess in front of her.
“Sorry about that Priscilla. I’ll go take a look at the patient you mentioned. Are they in the Curse Ward?”
“Y-yes, they are, my lady,” Priscilla the swan replied.
“Hmm. Alright, then. I’m taking my temporary apprentice with me. Can you show Jellik to the labs? He is going to be helping the alchemists.”
“And, uh, what of the, um, scary one?” she asked. Shyla snorted at Gaelin’s descriptor.
“He’s staying in my office until I can get one of the Mind Healers to give him a thorough brain scrub,” she informed the Healer, who nodded happily at that.
“Well, have fun you guys,” Dora said as she left the room, following her new mentor down the halls of the Hospice. The Celestial Dove hopped off of her head as she left, and flew over to perch on the back of Lady Shyla’s chair, looking down on both me and Gaelin.
“Try not to get thrown out while we’re gone, okay?” I pleaded with the halberdier as I rolled out of the office, prepared to follow Priscilla to the alchemical research laboratories within the Hospice. “And don’t fight the Celestial Dove!”
“No promises,” he ground out, doing his best to not look at the seven-winged bird. I sighed and closed the door behind me, before looking up apologetically at the Healer waiting on me.
“I’m sorry about,” I said to my guide. “He’s normally a lot more bearable, he just has an unhealthy, if slightly understandable, hate for birds. I’d say it’s nothing personal, but, well…”
I trailed off, eyeing the Healer’s feathery body, and she bobbed her head in understanding.
“I will try to be more understanding,” she replied kindly.
“Thank you,” I said, sighing in relief that I’d managed to get her opinion on him to turn around somewhat.
We walked in silence for a few more minutes, the calm and soothing atmosphere of the Hospice making it so that awkward small talk was not required. Healer Priscilla eventually brought me to a section of the advanced hospital where the doors were made of reinforced metal, not wood.
“Sometimes the alchemists get a bit too excited,” she explained when I asked about the doors. “These are made from Stygian Iron, a metal highly resistant to not only magic, but explosions and corrosive acids.”
“Makes sense,” I said, thinking back to all the times I’d accidentally blown something up when brewing a potion wrong. “So, will I be working alone, or with a group?”
“A group, most likely,” Healer Priscilla said. “And here we are, the main laboratory for the Hospice!”
She sent a flicker of magic into one of the doors, and it rumbled open. Inside, the vast sterile white chamber was filled with rows and rows of glass vials, tubes, and bottles. Some of these were empty, but others contained all kinds of alchemical ingredients and reagents.
And what an impressive assortment of alchemical equipment! From alembics to aetherions, Emerald Lens to crucibles, it was all there, and made by master craftsmen from the finest of materials.
This single lab put all the atelier I’d ever seen to shame!
“Um, are you alright?” she asked, noticing I was shaking slightly.
“I-it’s just so beautiful!” I sniffed, staring in joy at all the materials and advanced alchemical tools. Healer Priscilla rolled her eyes and left me to go fetch an alchemist. I barely noticed her departure. I was going to have so much fun here!
Chapter 15: Illuminating the way forward
“Oh! That’s quite clever! I’d never have thought to add powdered Salamandra scales to the concoction! Mostly because it’s highly flammable, but still! Ingenious way to speed up the heating process!” I said excitedly, peering closer at the potion brewing.
“It’s a neat shortcut, but you need to add fifty percent more water, and three drops of Ice Fig juice to balance out the abrupt rise of heat,” the alchemist I was watching work explained. “Still, it’s useful. And the Ice Fig juice adds a nice bit of flavor to an otherwise bland cavity curing potion.”
“Have I ever told you how much I love being a Royal Ooze? I can eat whatever I want, and I don’t suffer from cavities or diabetes as a result,” I pointed out. The alchemist laughed, before shoving me off the stool I was perched on. I rolled along the floor, chortling as I did so.
I didn’t hold the actions against the man. Rather, he didn’t know his own strength, being a troll and all. Imagine! The greatest alchemist at the Hospice was a troll! It certainly made me all the more eager to learn, if only to be closer to this strange phenomenon where a ten-foot-tall slab of muscle was the smartest person I’d ever met!
“Yes, yes, keep rubbing your squishy superiority into our poor mortal bodies,” he snorted, before turning off the flame beneath the boiling meabul flask. As the liquid cooled it went from a milk white to a lovely crystal clear hue.
After waiting for a few minutes, he took the bottle and drank the contents down, smacking his lips when he was done. Then, he probed one of his teeth to make sure it was healed.
“Mmm! I did it again!” he said gleefully, his chuckle rumbling like thunder.
“So, why did you have a cavity in the first place? Too many sweets?” I asked, and he nodded.
“That, and some potions aren’t all that great for your teeth, either. Don’t drink an antidote right after a healing potion, okay? That will make your teeth turn fluorescent orange,” the Hospice’s head alchemist warned me.
“I don’t have teeth,” I reminded him. The troll nodded slowly.
“Fair enough. Just be careful, though. Some potions react oddly if mixed together, and I doubt even an Ooze would find being transmuted into stone much fun.” I gulped at that, bobbing up and down rapidly.
The head alchemist then laughed. “Ah, don’t worry! I’ll make sure to teach you how not to get hurt by your own creations! Now, hop back on up onto the stool and I’ll show you how to make an anti-curse potion. It’s good against most wounds caused by Dark magic. Now, first you want to use salt water as the base liquid… don’t worry, the salt will be boiled away, leaving behind only the purifying effects of the salt…”
After a couple more hours of intense lessons, I’d crammed myself full of as much knowledge as I could take. I hopped off of my stool and sat on the cool marble tiles for a bit, digesting the information I’d acquired.
“I think I need to take a break, sir,” I told my teacher, and the troll nodded in understanding.
“Alright, then. Take a quick rest. But, be ready for more learning afterwards!” he said with a booming chuckle. I rolled out of the lab and headed down towards the trauma
center of the Hospice. I was curious to see how my other companions were doing, and I knew where Dora would likely be, so I was going to see her first.
We’d been in the Elemental Plane of Light for close to a week by Eraforian reckoning, and I’d only seen the others in passing a couple of times. They were all busy, just like me, learning to be better.
Dora was thriving under the care of Lady Shyla, and last I’d encountered her, was working on dispelling Blood Curses. Nasty things, those were, and extremely hard to cure, as they seeped into the blood of their victims and were passed on to future generations. Some were minor, like a string of terrible luck with women. Others were cruel, and condemned the afflicted to die before reaching a certain age, or if completely arbitrary conditions weren’t met. Despite their difficulty, though, Dora was tackling the challenge with great enthusiasm.
Gaelin, on the other hand, was struggling with his own lessons. While his treatments for curing his cursed dependency on his Berserker armor were going well, he was still trying to get used to birds. His therapy sessions seemed to be working as he didn’t fly into berserk rage at the mere sight of feathers anymore, but there was still a simmering animosity towards them I hoped the Mind Healers would be able to remove from him soon. I didn’t like seeing one of my friends so enthralled by their own emotions.
“Hey, Dora!” I called out upon spotting a flash of mint green skin passing by a corridor. The half-orc paused, and glanced back at me as I rolled into the hallway, following her.
“Oh, hey yourself, Jellik. Everything going well with your teacher?” she asked politely.
“Pretty good, all things considered. All the information I’ve been stuffing into myself is giving me some painful mind-cramps,” I replied.
“Mind-cramps?” she asked, amused by the name, and I wobbled back and forth simulating a shrug.
“I don’t exactly have a head, so they can’t be called ‘headaches,’ now can they?” I replied and she grinned at me.
“No, I don’t suppose that’d work,” she giggled.
“So, where are you going? Cure anything interesting lately?” I asked her, and she nodded.
“Well, I’m going to the cafeteria. Can’t forget to eat, even if the energy of Luminoth makes you feel sated and rested.”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said, recalling when her energy levels crashed after visiting the Lighthouse.
“As for anything interesting… well, I did have to cure a person who’d been cursed with tentacles,” she said after thinking over some of the weirder incidents.
“What’s wrong with tentacles?” I asked, making a tendril and waving it at her face.
Dora snorted and rolled her eyes. “Not everyone finds them as endearing as you do, Jellik. Plus, this guy had them coming from every orifice… it was horrific!”
She shuddered in disgust. I huffed in annoyance, before a devious thought crossed my mind.
Chuckling to myself, I expanded in size and twisted my gelatinous body into a humanoid shape. It’d been a while since I’d made myself a bipedal form, but I slid into it like it was a familiar set of robes.
Then, when Dora turned to look at me to see what I was chuckling about, see came face to face with a featureless humanoid made of purple slime that had a bunch of tendrils growing all over from the surface. Eyes, mouth, ears, nose, armpits… everywhere tentacles shouldn’t be, I made ‘em grow there.
She shrieked in terror when she saw me, causing me to laugh out loud. I immediately regretted it as she slammed her palms into me and pumped a torrent of magic into my body. I convulsed in pain as Dora stunned me with a powerful dispelling charm, and I reverted back into my cuddly spherical shape.
“Jellik?!” she gasped, before glaring at me as I groaned in pain. “Don’t do that! I’ve been trained by Lady Shyla to have a hair trigger response to being attacked, startled, or surprised!”
“Noted,” I coughed out. “Oh, by Cynthia, that hurts!”
Dora rolled her eyes and walked off. “Oh, suck it up you big baby!”
I lay on the floor for a while longer, twitching periodically and regretting the decisions I’d made that’d led to me lying like a puddle in the middle of a corridor.
Eventually, I sensed familiar heavily armored footsteps approaching me, and sure enough, it was Gaelin! He looked down at me in confusion, and I jiggled slightly to show I wasn’t dead.
“…I played a prank on Dora. It did not go well. For me,” I explained from where I lay. The halberdier winced.
“Wow, that was a terrible idea,” he said, before bending down and scooping me up. “You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah, just give me a bit of time, I’ll be right as rain in a little bit,” I told him, and he nodded. Gaelin continued on his way toward his destination, which also happened to be the cafeteria, with me still huddled in his arms.
The place was filled with off-duty Healers, patients who were well enough to be ambulatory, and visitors for said patients. It was lively, and combined with the cheerful bouquets of flowers on every table, made the Hospice seem less like a hospital for terminal curses and illnesses, and more like a spot for relaxing after a hard day’s work.
“Hey, do you smell that?” Gaelin asked out of the blue, and I turned on my sense of smell briefly.
Much as I liked the Hospice, constantly being bombarded with the scents of cleaning potions, antiseptics, and the sickly-sweet tingle of pestilence and death was unpleasant so I’d decided I wasn’t going to use my ‘nose’ while staying inside the building.
“I do, reminds me of freshly cut grass,” I replied. “It’s quite strong, almost overpowering the other scents in here. Is that what the salads smell like?”
“No, last time I was in the cafeteria the veggies did not smell this good,” Gaelin murmured. “Hmm, there’s Dora. Let’s see if she knows what’s going on.”
The blonde half-orc was staring at a menu hanging on a nearby wall, trying to decide which she wanted to go with for her meal. She heard Gaelin’s clanking and turned around, a faint smile on her face that soured when she spotted me in his arms.
“Have you learned your lesson?” she asked, and wobbled up and down best as I could.
“Yup. Don’t prank Dora. Or Healers in general. Jump scares are also off the table.”
Dora nodded her head firmly. “Good, glad we’ve got that settled.” She then looked at Gaelin.
“Do you have to wear your armor in here? You’re getting some weird looks.”
“I don’t feel comfortable outside of my armor anymore,” Gaelin admitted softly, so only we could hear him. “It’s getting harder and harder to take it off. Even with the curse treatments, my body still craves it. It’s not as bad as it used to be. I can go a whole day without feeling the need to put it on, but the Berserker armor has sunk its fangs too deep into me for the cure to work quickly.”
Dora and I winced at that admission.
“Well, crud,” she grunted. “That’s troublesome.”
“Dora, do you think you could learn how to cast the spells to treat Gaelin’s addiction to the Berserker armor?” I suggested. “I mean, you’re already learning a lot about curing other kinds of curses.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Dora promised. She then glanced back at the cafeteria menu. “Hey, off topic here, but do either of you know what’s making that fresh lawn smell?”
“No, we were hoping you might,” Gaelin replied. The scent was growing stronger, and abruptly the whole cafeteria smelled strongly of newly cut grass as a black and green entity burst into the room, thin wisps of black smoke drifting off of its body.
‘No, that’s not quite it,’ I realized as I looked closer. ‘The creature isn’t naturally two colors; the black seems to be charred flesh!’
Indeed, as it drew closer, eliciting gasps from the people it passed, it was clear that the blackened parts of its body were due to some sort of fire. Cursed flames, from the looks of it. No natural wound would still smolder. I was able to spot ember
s sparking in the depths of the cracked, seared portions of the body.
The entity was a dryad of some sort, her feminine, wooden body covered in horrific burns that turned her otherwise green body black. Thorny vines dangled from her head like strands of hair, and her amber eyes shone brightly despite the scorch marks that marred her left cheek. She wore a thin white patient robe, though parts of it were charred slightly where it’d come into contact with the dryad’s cursed burns.
The dryad looked wildly around the cafeteria, before her amber eyes alighted on Dora, Gaelin, and myself. She hastily ran towards us, though she stumbled every few steps. Behind her, a Healer was shouting at the dryad, trying to get her to stop and to return to her room. But the commands went ignored. The dryad tripped and fell, face planting right at Gaelin’s feet.
The halberdier looked down at the wooden woman warily, unsure as to what she was planning. Dora was looking at the dryad’s wounds in concern, and I couldn’t help but flinch as I sensed a great deal of Void energy clinging to the burns.
“Y-you three,” she choked out as she peered up at us, her voice echoing hollowly. “A-are you Ch-chosen Ones?”
We exchanged glances with each other. “I’m starting to hate how easily we keep getting recognized,” Dora let out in a huff. The dryad on the floor began to laugh and cry at the same time, tears of sap dripping down her cheeks.
“I-I knew it,” she whispered. “Y-you feel just like him…”
“Who do we feel like?” I asked.
“A Chosen One from my world,” she breathed out. “He held off the Void spawn as we fled. My village was one of the few he was able to save from destruction. We ran to the World Tree, and escaped through it into the Aether as our world burned around us.”
The dryad began to convulse with pain as her wounds flared up, small tongues of flames lashing out from her burns, and her clothes burned off of her body. Dora immediately bent down to help her.
