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I am stirred from my meditations by a tapping at my window. Another of my messengers, probably- yes, there he is, Iago. Most of them do not do this, they know how it irritates me, but his flapping about tells me this is urgent. I open the window to let him in, and see paper poking out of a small bag he carries. As I take it, I hand him a piece of bread, and flick the letter open.
"What of the Cypress Circle?" Melina asks. "You said they were exceptional healers."
"Indeed. Unfortunately they lack an enclave in the area. And that means that we're the best people for the job."
"Silveroak isn't far," Melina muses, turning immediately to retrieve her pack. "I shouldn't need much."
"Pack extra clothes," I tell her. "Sometimes a case like this takes longer than we expect, or ends up... messier."
"What of food?" Lucinda asks, "I would hate to impose."
"Traditionally, if a healer comes from out of town, their host is expected to provide meals. And if they are unable, someone else in the village will cover it." Lucinda seems unconvinced, so I continue, "This is mutually beneficial; if I don't have to bring as much food, I can bring more tools, more medicine."
I look to the windowsill, where Iago has finished his bread, but he still seems anxious. They are clever birds, odds are that our petitioner was distressed and he noticed. I pat his head and wish him well, then turn to pack my own things.
Silveroak is a quiet village, I lived there once, long ago. None would recognize me now, though. The mood is bright when we arrive; despite the reason I'm here, most people seem to be doing well and it's a sunny day, just before noon by my estimation. A child at play sees us, and rushes to greet us and of course the wargs.
"They're so fluffy!" the little blonde girl says excitedly.
"They really are," I affirm. "And very cuddly, if they trust you."
"Can... can I pet one?"
"That's up to them," I say, gesturing toward the one Lucinda rode. "He's the friendliest of the three." The young girl, scarcely more than five years old by my reckoning, carefully approaches the warg. He recognizes what she wants, and lowers his head to allow her to better reach. "There's your answer, go ahead," I say with a smile. She girl pats his head, scratches behind his ears, and he's clearly enjoying the attention; wargs don't wag their tails as forcefully as some dogs, but there's still a swaying that has the same meaning. "I am sorry to interrupt, but unfortunately I'm here for work. Do you know where Lawrence and Malcolm live?"
"Lawrence..? Oh! You mean Uncle Larry!" The girl's eyes light up when she realizes who I mean.
"He's family?"
"No, but him and Uncle Mal teach us and take care of us when our parents are busy." Her gaze drifts away and her tone becomes more somber as she asks, "I heard Uncle Mal was sick, are you here to help him?"
"That I am," I nod.
"Okay, I'll show you the way!" she shouts, excitement returning to her voice. We follow along, of course. It's a short trip, she could likely have just pointed to the house, but I'll not stop a child that wants to help.
We set the wargs to rest outside the petitioner's home, and I see the little girl staring at them again. I laugh, despite my anxieties; I hope she never loses that love of animals. "As long as they let you, it's fine. If they growl, let them be."
"Thankyouthankyou!" she shouts, rushing to the three. Melina's- I swear, she sighed, as though she was already worn out by the child. Yet when the child reached out to her, she welcomed her attention nonetheless.
Just before I knock, the door swings open. A fair-skinned, middle-aged man with light brown hair and grey eyes greets me. "Are you the witch I wrote to?" He is smaller than most of the farmers, but despite his obvious anxiety, there's a clarity of mind to him that shows through immediately.
"That I am," I confirm. "Morgan Suncrest, my apprentice Melina Stillwater, and-" My tongue catches in my throat for a moment. What do I call her?
Lucinda continues, introducing herself, "Lucinda Palemoon." I see recognition in the man's eye, but know not what to make of it.
"I'm Lawrence," the man says, offering a handshake. I accept. "Mal and I help out around town, taking care of the kids, teaching, he fixes things," he continues, leading us into his home. I see more books in this one house than I'd have expected in the entire village, all sorted neatly by subject and title. Several are books of recipes. "He fell ill about a tenday ago, I think. It was a very gradual thing, so I can't truly be certain." We reach a door near the rear of the house, and Lawrence stops. "He's in here. He's been struggling, so please, be gentle with him. And quiet, he seems to be really sensitive to sound right now."
"Understood," I say, just above a whisper. "Thank you for the information." We open the door and are greeted with a piteous sight. The man in question, dark-skinned and wiry-haired, is in good physical condition, and if he helps Lawrence with the teaching, he would also have to be insightful and perceptive. Yet I see a man bedridden and miserable. His skin has a slight discoloration to it compared to the portraits around the house, and he groans and mumbles sounds, rather than words.
"Um. Lady Suncrest?" Lucinda whispers.
"Yes, dear?"
"Do you- can we step out for a moment?"
"I know what you are," Lawrence says, almost vacantly. His thoughts are clearly focused on Malcolm. "If you have some insight, please, I don't care about anything else."
"Ephemera poisoning," Lucinda blurts out. "It's... it's all a mix of things. Human, animal, other."
"How could this happen?" Lawrence asks - pleads, really.
"Contaminated food, bad crops, that's the usual way," I explain, raising my hand subtly in front of Lucinda to cut her off. I don't have the same sight she does, but I know the signs too. "Ingesting anima and dynamis will, invariably, have an impact. There's anima in much of what we eat, so we are able to process it. But too much, or too many conflicting sources of dynamis... Have you had any odd harvests of late?"
"I.. yes. We bought some seeds from a traveling trader several moons ago. Just a small batch, planted them in our private garden. Figured if they took root, we could have a little extra variety, but I didn't want to interfere with the farms so I... then about a moon ago, they were ready for harvest and- oh, what have I done, I'm so sorry-"
"Sir." I interrupt. "Sir. This can be reversed."
"You- you speak true? This isn't a lie?"
"I always speak true. Today and tomorrow, we have work to do - and that includes you. We need your anima." After the words leave my lips, I immediately realize it was too blunt.
"Take it, then, take it all if it'll save him-"
"Hold." Amazing how fast he went from composed to this. "No, we don't need that much. Does he have any family in town?"
"He does, yes. A grandmother and a cousin. Will you need them, too?"
"It will help," I nod. "Think about it like a fight. If someone is fighting not for themselves, but for love or family, they fight harder. It's a more complicated thing, but the concept broadly applies as well to reasserting one's original will against intrusion." Looking back to the bed, I instruct, "If anything remains of the original harvest, destroy it. Fire works best. Do you have any of the original seeds that you had purchased?"
"I'm sorry, I don't."
"Mm. A shame. If that trader comes back, buy a sample. Don't tell them why. I'll double the cost, I want to figure out where this came from and if it was malicious."
"Okay. What do I do now?" Lawrence asks. He's regained his composure now that we have a plan of action, which is good.
"After you gather the bad harvest, you and Melina will go to retrieve his relatives. Lucinda, can I trust you to get the fire going?"
"Of course, Lady Suncrest," she answers eagerly.
We all turn to leave the room, but I linger behind for a moment. "Malcolm, I don't know if you can hear me, I don't know if you can understand me right now. But help is on the way, I swear it."
I return to the living room and prepare my tools. Crystal vials, silver needles, small glass channels. Soon after I get the last of my supplies prepped, Lawrence returns with two more people in tow - an elderly, kind-looking lady, and a young man that looks like he normally has an attitude problem but is being on his best behavior. One look confirms what I saw in the portraits, that he was in fact discolored, and it wasn't artistic license.
"Thank you for coming," I say as they filter into the room.
"Soon as we heard Mal needed help, we were here," the woman replies. "I'm Vivian, some of the kids just call me Grandmama Viv, and this is Joseph." The young man nods silently, seeming to want Vivian to take the lead. "So, what do you need?"
"Some of your blood. Not much."
"This isn't gonna be for a vampire thing, is it?" Joseph asks.
"No, I see to Lucy's needs on my own," I say, without even thinking it through. "Moving on, for a quick summary: blood conveys the ephemera: anima and dynamis. I need samples of your ephemera to help Malcolm fight his way back to himself, to end the hostile influences that he picked up."
"I don't mean to be a skeptic, but have you done this before?" Vivian asks.
"I have, in fact, several times. Those cases were not so far along as this one, but the principle applies the same."
"In that case, jab me all you need," Vivian says, stepping toward the table. "If my boy needs help and I can help, I will."
It is a simple process, thankfully. One jab at a vein, guide the blood into a glass channel, then use that to pour it into a vial. Repeat for each contributor. Each vial has a tag, which I label V, J, and L.
"That's more than I thought," Joseph says.
"Indeed. If I had only taken exactly as much as I currently think he needs, and had been wrong, then I would need to get more. Is that an issue?"
"No, no, that makes sense," the man nods. "Do you need anything else from us?"
"No, that'll do. I'll let you three be now," I say. I gesture to Melina and take my vials and my bag toward the bedroom again. Out the window, I see Lucinda has prepared a firepit, and I open it to add an instruction I'd forgotten. "Make sure the ash of that doesn't get away from you. A little is fine but we should be able to account for most or we may have a problem." She signals that she heard me, and I return to my work.
Three droplets of grandmother, three droplets of cousin, four droplets of husband, placed in a quartz basin. Draw blood from the patient as I'd done earlier, ten droplets in a silver basin. Add a small amount of pure water. To attune a smoky quartz crystal to Malcolm's ephemera, I submerge it within the silver basin, and then make inscriptions upon it with a small alexandrite blade. As the blood filters into those channels, the stone attunes and reddens. Not on the surface, but internally. That's good, that means the tuning is working.
I repeat the process using a pure quartz crystal in the donor basin. This one grows cloudy and reddish, resembling smoky quartz but for its coloration. And then the second process once more.
"Wait, what's the third for?" Melina asks.
"Talisman. His case has progressed too far, it needs additional intervention. So, in cases of ephemera sickness, there's an interesting quirk to this spell," I explain, setting the first two crystals - Mal's and the spell quartz - next to each other in a crystal basin of pure water. As Melina watches, the two crystals seem to swirl internally, as though agitated. "This is an easy way to ascertain that we've handled our inscriptions properly; if we had not, they would not react because they would have no ephemera. But now, we have work to do, and I'll need your help with it."
"Wait," Melina interrupts, barely over a whisper. "There's something you didn't tell me - or Lawrence. I saw the signal to Lucinda."
I nod and tell her, "Dhampir. 'Half-vampire', so the lore goes. They need ephemera, like a vampire, but like a human they can't feed on it directly. Most dhampir are known as bondknights - sworn to a vampire lord, they provide whatever services are needed and in exchange are fed from a portion of their lord's ephemera. That is the end state of Malcolm's condition, without our intervention."
"But if they can't feed on it..."
"Indeed. Some do spontaneously develop the ability and become vampires in their own right. The rest die."
The spell itself takes us into the late evening. By the time it's done, I'm hungry and exhausted, but that didn't matter. I had a duty. Lucinda was kind enough to bring us tea, but eating would be too much an interruption. Not long after a late supper, we retire to a local hostel for rest. The second day, more spells, more rituals, and a few supplemental brews to help mitigate the symptoms.
It's not until the third day that we are finished, but there's still healing to do. "He is as well as he can be. From here, it's simply a matter of rest and natural recovery. Keep an eye on him, he should be properly lucid again in a day or so, and mostly back to form within a tenday."
"Thank you so very much, good healer," Lawrence says. The relief in his voice is palpable. He hands me a small coinpurse, but rather than coins, it's full of crystals and polished stones and gems. "I hope these will be helpful. We have little money to offer, but I've been collecting these and, well, I saw what you were using. I thought you might have use for them."
"Indeed so, a most thoughtful gift. Thank you," I say, bowing my head respectfully. "If his condition doesn't improve at all within five days, send emergency correspondence. But I don't believe that will happen. He's a strong man."
"He really is," Lawrence smiles. The three of us leave, and I whistle for the wargs. I can tell from their mood they've been well-fed.
We take to the road home, back to Wolfwicce Wood. When we get to the forest's edge, though, something is deeply wrong, something that sends a chill down my spine.
Silence.
Absolute silence.
No birdsong, no rustling leaves. I'm not the only one to notice, Melina and the wargs also know that this isn't right. My warg takes the lead, smelling the air and scanning the trees. I'm searching the trees myself, and listening for something, anything. His sniffing grows steadily faster and more insistent, until he suddenly takes off running, with me barely holding on. I try to calm him, to slow him down, but I think he can hear the dread in my voice. I know something is wrong, and I so desperately want to believe otherwise. I so desperately want to believe false what my nagging fears are telling me is true.
Cresting a hill, my heart breaks apart. My suspicions and the warg's fears are confirmed by the sight of two dead, badly-mangled wargs. Hard pinion-shaped scales are embedded in their shallower wounds, and large holes in their torsos- you can see through them, almost.
When they catch up, Melina and Lucinda find me kneeling down next to the fallen. "I'm... I'm so sorry," I whisper, tears flowing freely. "I should've..."
"What happened here?" Melina asks.
"Razorbeaks," I choke out. "I know- I know these wounds."
"My brothers told me about them," Lucinda says. "We need to stick together and get the rest of the pack to shelter." I nod, but cannot rise until Lucinda and Melina help me.
"How do we get rid of them?" Melina asks.
"It's not easy... and we can't do it without help..." I say, trying and failing to recover my composure. Part of my mind is still searching, thinking. There would've been far less left, unless something interrupted the feeding. When we return home, I see what that something was - four other wargs, two injured but walking. Without a word, the three of us tend to their wounds.
We'll need help. And I'm- I don't want to but I have to. For the pack.
We need Maryse.
