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I started dabbling in the arts of medicine and healing when I was a young man. It had fascinated me, watching as people would enter the healer’s building and walk out either better, the same, or worse than how they had walked in. I used to think that perhaps they were magic, doctors and healers were, because there was no possible way on earth that a single person could understand the human body and mind fully enough to fix it. It wasn’t until I started my personal study that I learned that they in fact, didn’t know everything. A lot of it was based on assumption. Maybe visible proof. But mostly magic. And no one ever understood the complete workings of magic.
I was in school to be an arcane assistant, originally. My mentor was a wizened old warlock that was a couple of steps away from insane. Yet despite his moments of rambling, he had taught me well. I learned to how to turn ducks into spiders and conjure illusions of grandeur in front of a shack to make it look like a mansion. I learned to give a man strength and to take it away. I learned, while in secret, how to properly ask the gods and deities to give me the power to raise an animal back to life.
He was a good master, and it was a shame to see his life taken away by the Great Fiend as soon as his contract was over.
‘Never trade your life for power,’ He had warned me when I began under his tutelage. I believed him and had no intention to. I was ambitious enough to know I’d find the power myself, one day.
Unfortunately, I felt constricted in my field as an arcane assistant. I had originally taken up the job to broaden my horizons and to learn a little bit of magic, but it wasn’t enough. When a woman stumbled to my current master’s office door, begging for healing, I realized I had not learned anything of the sorts.
I could give her life or take it away or strengthen her bones and give her the ability to walk again, but I could not take the disease from her body, that made her appear as a sagging sack of flesh before me. I could not tell what I felt more of, anger at my ineptitude, or pity at her future demise.
She became my first patient, that lady, stationed in an unused room of my master’s office. He was a busy, younger sorcerer who had little to no need for an arcane assistant. I was his secretary, essentially, and he did not care what I did. ‘Contain that sickness from my other clients, and report to me once she is healed’ was all he told he when he saw her for the first time, before turning away with a swish of his cloak. I don’t think he knew I was not equipped to heal, but at the same tie I don’t think he was equipped to teach me either.
I spent several days researching healing magic, potions, herbs, and medicines for the woman that groaned quietly every so often in the corner of the room. Her symptoms were foreign to me, and her descriptions of pain I didn’t know what to do with. A stabbing pain could mean anything, from a curse to the mind to a parasitic insect, chewing away at her organs. I knew I was nowhere close to qualified to even attempt to perform surgery on her.
It was aggravating, that week of research, because of my limited knowledge, experience, and ability to understand. It was one thing to have a spell and just know its effects, but it was another to know the intricate responses of the body to each and every specific factor. I felt like I was going to go as insane as my old master.
It wasn’t until the woman herself, during a night where my enchanted candles whispered to longings of rest to me, did she offer the suggestion of taking a sample of her blood and studying it. Previous healers had done it before, and although they came inconclusive, she had faith that I could find a solution. It was an idea I wasn’t aware existed, since I was only familiar of taking blood to use during rituals, or to create evil potions, or to summon bad things.
To study it was a foreign concept.
I was nervous, admittedly, when she pressed a small knife into my palm and held her arm out, urging me to make the cut small. I pressed the vial against her skin and cut carefully, watching in awe as thick, red liquid flowed out. I was not a stranger to blood, but I had never had a person or creature so willingly give it up. Was this the power of disease and healing? To give up one’s vitality so easily to be analyzed?
I imagined that had it been my old master, I would have never trusted to give him my blood.
Deciding that nowhere in my current master’s books would I find any sort of direction in regards to analyzing blood, I set off to find someone or somewhere that did. The woman was sent to an almshouse, where she would stay cared for under my own coin. I tasked her to not die before I returned, and she promised she would try. I was inspired to journey as long as it would take in order to find someone that could teach me what I was trying to learn. I’m sure she heard it in my voice and graced me a small smile before I left.
Many towns I traveled to had healers that didn’t understand my questions. Magic and potions and herbs were all that were needed, they told me. There was no need to study blood because that was all there was to it. Red, thick liquid that rushed through our veins, helping our body get its nutrients. That was the extent of any and all their knowledge.
As I rested at a tavern several nights after the start of my journey, a person joined me at my table. She was a person who was trained in magic, that I could tell, for we had the same look in our eyes – the understanding that anything and everything could be manipulated, so one must be watchful.
She told me she was a wizard, but I didn’t particularly believe her. There was not a single book or packet of herbs hanging off of her body and in fact, all she wore was traveling clothes and a cloak. As she moved, however, there was a tinkle of vials from her waist. Perhaps she worked with potions, I thought.
Apparently she had seen me asking about the healer of the town about the study of blood. I was wary to give her any more information about my quest until she smiled and pointed at herself.
‘I’m a hemomancer,’ she said. ‘I study and manipulate blood.’
I was surprised, for I had no idea people like those existed. I didn’t know it was possible.
I praised the gods internally for letting the answer to my problems walk straight up to me and I greeted her warmly and asked for her teaching. And, much like any magical being I’ve ever met, I agreed to trade my time as her assistant and companion in return for tutelage.
Quickly I learned that a hemomancer was not necessarily a healing profession. When I told her of the woman dying back in my home, she simply laughed. ‘I could dry her up of her blood, to take her out of her misery, should she so choose it’ she said, and I believed her. Yet I was also intrigued. She taught me that her powers did not necessarily lie within the realm of healing but more so in battle. I was a scholar, not a fighter, but that did not dissuade my interest.
I asked her if there was any good I could do with it and she thought about it briefly. Manipulation, it seemed, was a very neutral action in her eyes. She could make a man walk to the bar and get her a drink, if she compelled him to. Or she could make him walk off a cliff.
I was unnerved by her brutality, but only a little. She had opened doors to a new form of magic that I had never even knew existed.
Over the course of a few weeks, I had learned vastly more in that specific vein of magic than I had in my arcane assistanceship. She taught me how to work my magic into the body of another being, to meld myself with my target or client, and in a way, control their body as if my own. She let me practice on herself, providing me a small vial of her own blood that she kept handy at her side, and sitting down encouraging me to try and make me move her.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t anything different than if I had animated a puppet and was willing it to walk and jump and spin. She allowed her body to go limp enough for me to practice controlling it, but I always knew her power was far stronger than mine for she could resist with ease, sometimes causing the rebound effect of my magic make me go dizzy. Under her mentorship I trained and trained and trained, until I had finally sufficiently grown adept in the art in her eyes. It wasn’t until she patted my shoulder, reminding me of my original journey’s intention, did I suddenly remember there was a dying woman waiting for me at home.
I asked her what I was supposed to do now that I had a skill that didn’t particularly seem to help and she thought for a moment before shrugging. Within the week I graduated from her teaching as she wanted to leave the town, and I was still left without an answer.
Unsure whether or not to feel disheartened at my lack of answer, or excited at my newfound ability, I sent word back home. It returned quickly for me to learn that my patient died at the almshouse, for I was gone too long and the caretakers there had not a clue on how to treat her. This was something I had expected and prepared for. I had reminded myself that although she was but one patient, I was sure she wouldn’t be the last. I would have to stay determined if I was to help any future person that came to my door, begging me for help I could not give.
I eventually found my answers at a school in a big city, far more industrialized than any town I had been in. I enrolled in the school, sending word back to my sorcerer-mentor that I had done so in hopes to learn the arts of medicine and healing, and he simply sent back that I was relieved of my job in order to focus on it. I doubt he cared much where I was, now. Yet free from any duty back in my old home, I was able to set forth on throwing myself in the multitude of books, research, and experiments the school had to offer.
I excelled and learned quickly, eager to learn any information possible that could help a poor soul in need. I studied the arts of the body and mind, isolated from magic, and learned and discovered that there were a dozen other ways to cure one of the fugle pox, that did not require a wizard’s spell.
The art of hemomancy did not fade, I made sure of that. I continued to practice it every night, using the blood from the animals we experimented on, refining my skill until I could make a rat turn so docile I could stick a syringe in it, or so aggravated it would bash itself against the cage walls.
Combining them was something I was afraid of, if I am being honest. As I sat with patients, it struck me how many different people lived different lives that I was always curious about. As I healed them, they would tell me stories. And I came to grow more and more eager to hear these tidbits of information from people across the lands.
The first time I did it was with someone who came in with the fugle pox. More quickly healable with medicines than herbs, and the man chattered on about the gossip in his small town. The blood sample I had from him, which we always took as protocol, called to me. It reminded me of what I could obtain, should I so use it, and use it I did. He ended up returning a fortnight afterwards after a gentle beckoning from my magic, claiming that he simply just ‘didn’t feel well’ despite having no actual problem. And so I sat with him as he ‘recuperated’ and listened to his stories.
His little town of Mortarfield intrigued me. It was small and simple, yet the people there lived bustling lives. They had no actual healer, so they always traveled into the city. After I questioned him why not, he explained that it was because the capital refused to hand over a much-needed healer to such a small and dying town when they could be used elsewhere.
An idea then struck me. It was admittedly a little sinister, but I had lived my whole life being neutral to that which people considered unethical. I offered to be their town’s healer, or doctor, as the school called us, and he was in disbelief and delighted. I explained that as I was still learning, this town would be a perfect place to give me practice and experience and would also solve their healer problem.
In truth, I was fascinated by the power of combining my hemomancy with medicine. With just a simple mental tug on this blood, I was able to make him come back by the next day. I knew I was skilled by now, my old mentor’s words always echoing in my ears as I practiced, and I had now just opened up a new door of possibilities with a town full of extremely willing people. I was also skilled at my study. The school sent me off happily, satisfied that I was competent enough in my medical studies and proud that I wanted to ‘help the country’ by sharing my craft to the needy.
As I moved into the small town, I was greeted like a king. People threw themselves at me, requesting I solve them of all their ailments from a sickness, to an ache in their hip, and I took blood samples from them all. I healed them, of course, solidifying their trust in me, and slowly began to work my magic.
Slowly but surely, the town began to follow my lead. Irritating residents I wanted to leave, left with a simple compel to their body. They had no reason why their body wanted them to pick up their possessions and start walking, but if the gods wanted them to, they would. I simply nodded, making sure to make note of where they went in order to keep tabs. I encouraged them to write back to me whenever there was a major change in their life and as their saviour in sickness, they happily agreed.
Younger, lazy residents that had no interest in working for the greater good, I made to either pick up the axe or to venture out into the surrounding towns and cities, giving them a sense of ‘adventure’ to consistently bring back stories of the outside back home. They turned into my informants, not just giving me updates on other towns and the ailments that plagued them, but also the words on the streets, keeping me up to date on the gossip around town.
I didn’t toy too much with their lives, as every once in a while if I pushed too far, they’d push back, curiously wondering amongst themselves why sometimes it’d feel as if they’re body moved without them telling it too. My goal was to instill a belief and faith, not the idea of possession.
Yet on a day that a young man was close to near death, I decided to try my luck.
He was rushed into my office, the son of the man who came to my office back in the big city, and I could tell that despair was not far. The son had lived in different city and came home to visit his family when he fell ill. I knew I could cure him given some weeks or perhaps some months, but my desire for experimentation overcame my sense of goodwill.
As he lay in my office during the night, I killed him quickly, ridding him of his blood enough for him to fall into death’s hands swiftly. Reanimation was no stranger to me, as I had done it once with small creatures and the like, but I was curious to see how my hemomancy would work in this case.
I drained most of his blood for my own uses, saving it amongst my archives of bottles for future use, and took a vial of my own. I had yet to use it, since my own blood I considered priceless (for you must never best the hemomancer at his own game), but as the young man was now dead, I saw it as an opportunity.
I gave him my blood and made it multiply, filling him back with life’s basic essence. Then, with just a simple spell and the will I had honed to perfection, I made him breathe once more.
The man was ecstatic his son had been ‘healed’ when he came the next day and I made sure to create the ‘healing process’ as believable as possible. I owned every single one of his movements and I breathed when he breathed, and spoke when he spoke, all with the will at mind. I made him happy and relieved, but weak and tired, slowly regaining strength over time. Soon, after several weeks of rest and spending time with his father, I sent him off again, my healthy puppet of a corpse trekking across plains and mountains back to his own city.
I saw through his eyes and heard through his ears. In ways, this was far more convenient than the informants I had sent out on journeys and called back. Through this, I was living the life outside of my town, while also focusing on my work here at home.
My ambition got the best of me, but I believed in its worth and worked quickly and quietly. One by one I killed off the residents and visitors of my town, instilling a vial of my own blood each time. One by one, my puppets began to rise and although I was worried for the cacophony of lives I lived, it seemed to not bother. While I could see and speak through my own body, I could simply switch at will to another’s, which my blood seemed to run by itself, as if it knew my intentions for the body.
My town became a home of living corpses, but ones that you could never imagine to be dead. They laughed, they cried, they dined together, all under my will. They came to me, feigning illnesses, in case a visitor came and wondered why the doctor’s home seemed bare of patients. But they were happy, for I made them to be.
The town flourished, and became my base of information, with consistent people flowing in and out, sharing me the news of the world outside of my little bubble of creations. I enjoyed the peace and serenity, and the ability to do as I pleased.
My idea is to spread amongst the world, although I know that is nothing more than a fever dream. I do not wish to control the world, more so monitor it, and that I have done with the many bodies I’ve already claimed, traveling across the realms and feeding me news.
I look back here and there, remembering my origins. I find that I’m grateful to everyone I’ve crossed paths with, and hope that the woman who had died waiting for me to find this gift is resting peacefully in the afterlife. I’ve debated reviving her, and might possibly go through with it and keep her as another puppet here in my small town, for I believe she’d fit in well here.
Perhaps my next goal is to find her remains and bring her back slowly, if she had not already decomposed into the ground. Perhaps if she had, that can be my next point of interest, for I’ve always been intrigued by the large black books I catch in bookstores, warding off people from their contents of necromancy.
Perhaps.