Chapter Text
I would really like a few days off as I was still feeling awful. My expectations from yesterday were that a good night’s sleep would fix everything, but not really. While the day outside was slowly moving towards lunch, my body was still a mess. So Iri was taking care of things while I was lazing around in my bed.
Sadly, we had to move forward regardless of how I felt. People needed their citizenship, marriages and/or entering into their adulthood. I wobbled out of the bed and Iri put me in my robes. It actually hurt more today than yesterday, but after a while, I became numb to the pain and could move somewhat. So I went outside, while my attendant began to pack our stuff.
“Lady Mila, what happened to your face?”
Kantna was taken aback by my appearance. It was probably the first time on our journey that I was the one showing up in a more miserable state during our departure. But my face had still its neutral expression with a smile. No matter what. That was still there.
“I am grateful for your worries. I burned myself accidentally. I’m still too young to have proper control over my mana,” I explained with a faked sigh.
Kantna looked unsure about my answer, but I kept my pretense.
“Will you be able to continue with your duties?” he asked after a pause.
“Absolutely. No matter what. I will successfully finish this assignment as is expected of me.”
My resolute answer earned me an unconvinced nod from him.
Meanwhile, Iri brought the first part of our luggage and returned back inside. I waited until she repeated that trip, and then I produced my highbeast. Kantna put his own luggage nearby, so Iri could pick it up. I used that exact moment to ask him for help with sending ordonnanzes.
“My mother is sending them to me to inform me about home. She doesn’t really expect me to return them since I don’t have a schtappe, but I would like to surprise her. Would you be so kind to help me?” I faked another smile.
“Of course.”
He whipped his wand and tapped both birds. I immediately spoke my prepared words.
“Mother, this is Mila, I am really grateful for your messages. The tax official who is accompanying me was kind enough to send this reply for me. I am pleased that the harvest festival was such a success. I’m looking forward to my return home.”
After I was done, both ordonnanzes were sent back to their owners.
Now at least Damuel doesn’t have to run across the duchy to get these back.
I nodded to myself with satisfaction.
“I thank you for your assistance,” I said with another friendly smile.
But I still planned to rat him out for his embezzlement attempt. No amount of nice gestures would change that. Iri and I entered our shumil and then we moved towards the next town.
The mayor there stared at me with a polite expression unsure whether he should acknowledge that half of my face was red. He stayed silent instead. I didn’t care that much, as I was already an unexpected sight because of my age. And they were in a celebratory mood anyway, so nobody dwelt on it.
With the exception of the children waiting for their baptism. Once I stepped towards them, they bombarded me with a lot of weird questions. On the one hand, I was glad that I was seen as approachable and they weren’t scared of the blue robe. On the other hand, everything was hurting, and I wanted the whole ordeal to be over. So while I was smiling in a friendly fashion, on the inside, I was crying and pleading for everyone to shut up.
We breezed through all the ceremonies and then I excused myself again and retreated to my bed. Iri managed to fetch some kind of yogurt-like substance from the town’s folk and put it on my face. I was pretty sure it would do nothing against mana burns, but I didn’t want to diminish her efforts.
I really wished someone would teach me these things. With magic, all I had was guesswork. It was frustrating not knowing what did what. Maybe if I covered myself with my own mana while hugging my sister, it would have protected me. Or maybe it would have killed her. So I wasn’t regretting my choice at all.
The next day, we moved to another stopping point. Nothing really changed about my body hurting, but I got used to it enough to not cry internally anymore.
“You look better today,” Iri announced before our highbeast landed.
So maybe it got better even when I didn’t feel like it. I widened my smile towards her and then I stepped outside. We were greeted by another crowd ready to celebrate.
Iri and I went to prepare the next batch of children for their baptism.
“Do you know your praying pose? It goes like this,” I began to demonstrate.
All the children copied that without any problem. Just like in previous towns. But this time, we had an exception. One boy was sitting on the ground, he wasn’t even attempting to try it.
“What about you? Care to join us?” I said with a playful tone.
I was still wary of scaring others as a blue robe. Children played along because of my age, but it could always crumble with a few harsh words from me.
“He injured his legs,” other children informed me.
Two other boys picked him up and helped him towards me.
Bleahgh … his ankle is inflated like a balloon. That sight was unsettling. But I couldn’t exactly look away. I was here to project confidence and act my status. His second ankle looked better at least. He was using that leg while being supported by his friends.
Technically, he could do the pose while being supported by others, but more than that, I was concerned about the stale blood in his ankle getting infected. Without antibiotics, even that could kill him.
Maybe I could just heal him?
My prayer did in fact work on my sister. But that was much less damage to repair, not really an injury, but just her puffed eyes from crying. At the time, I just focused on visualization and wished for it to disappear. And so it happened.
How much mana would something that was more serious take? And would I even know how to repair it? Does the healer need to know how to fix something? Or can it be just forced by more mana? If I prayed for the swelling to disappear just like with those puffed eyes, would that also heal that connective tissue that got strained?
I really wish I knew these things. I complained once again. Magic. Someone. Teach. Aaargh.
But even if I didn’t manage to heal him completely enough for him to stand, with the swelling gone, there would be no threat of infection and him dying. So either way, it was worth a try.
“Listen everyone, we will pray to Heilschmerz, goddess of healing, to heal your friend,” I announced to the children around me.
Usually, I was quite apprehensive towards praying. It was because of that whole “you have to mean it for it to work”, and I wasn’t quite exactly there. Like, I could see all the hints about praying and gods in the story, but for me, it was still just that, hints. So I was 90% convinced that gods existed in this world. But if someone revealed to me that all this time invoking subordinate gods was equivalent to interacting with the periodic table in chemistry, I would have just shrugged with a “makes sense” and continued without issue.
Because of that, it was always awkward to ask for something through prayer.
Do I anger someone on the other side, since I wear shrine maiden’s clothes just as a safety precaution, and pray only because it worked for Rozemyne?
My praying was often in a similar fashion to a student doing it right before an important exam.
And during such times of distress it worked splendidly. During everyday life it felt, well, awkward. Thankfully, ceremonies were a nice middle ground. Since praying was required for the job anyway, I didn’t feel weird doing it. As such, I could offer my mana without problem, even when my initial intention was to just produce pretty lights for the commoners.
And since I got used to it, I was able to pray for someone’s recovery, like my sister. Or now this boy. The goddess of healing shouldn’t have a problem with someone wanting to heal others, right? Even when that someone was me.
So I radiated complete confidence towards the children who were watching me with puzzled expressions.
“Repeat after me,” I instructed.
And I started chanting words of healing prayer. Should I imagine the tissue getting reconnected? I pushed that last thought aside and I just let the prayer run its course.
When I opened my eyes, some residue light was disappearing and the boy’s leg was no longer swollen. I suppressed my need to grin gleefully. At least the threat of infection was gone. The boy looked down with complete amazement, and then he grinned instead of me. He immediately jumped.
My eyes widened in terror as I wanted to shout “No!” at him. I didn’t know if I managed to take care of just the swelling or if I completely healed his legs.
If he starts crying the moment he lands, I will bury myself.
Thankfully, he touched the ground while still laughing.
“Wow, it worked!” two boys that had been holding him were staring at his legs.
I stealthily exhaled a little bit of air as tension left my body.
“Of course, and if you will take your baptism seriously, you will receive a real blessing as well,” I declared with fake confidence.
The other people from the crowd were approaching the boy, and it looked like I put the whole ceremony into disarray for a minute or two. While children and adults were speaking with the healed boy, Kantna and the mayor approached me.
“Lady Mila, why are you wasting your mana like that?” Kantna asked with slightly furrowed eyebrows.
There was more surprise in his voice rather than annoyance so I still could smooth it with some good excuse. Hmm, lack of noble education or my age?
“I am still a minor. So I don’t have an important job like you that would require mana. To me, it’s not really wasting if I recuperate it over time.”
I smiled innocently. My naive attitude worked.
“Is that why you are accompanying these ceremonies with noble blessings?” he wondered.
Hey, that is actually a good excuse.
“Yes. I can’t do much without a schtappe. I can only do blessings with my ring.”
I tried to play it on my childish eagerness. With a bit of luck he would consider me just a bored child. It seemed to work as he nodded to himself.
“Still, I have never actually seen someone trying to heal with blessing,” he remarked suddenly.
As he was scratching his chin, I instantly came with a reply.
“Naturally. A schtappe is the most convenient tool for using magic. Using a ring is inefficient.”
With my second schtappe mention I finally caused a little smirk in his eyes. So I adjusted my expression a little, to look more frustrated. I wanted him to think only about me being jealous.
The more he would think about me being just a jealous child that wanted to show off because I didn’t possess a “wand” like him, the less he would think about someone using a prayer to heal people. I wasn’t exactly certain if that was common knowledge or not, but I rather played it safe.
So while he turned back to walk to his seat, I played just that, a bored child. I complained and expressed how I would like to do more, but regrettably, I couldn’t.
“Lady Mila, we are truly blessed by your visit. I will go spread the word among the people,” the mayor said with a friendly smile.
What? I wasn’t talking to you. I just… What exactly was it that he wanted to spread among those people?
“There are plenty of citizens with sickness,” he added with an even more wrinkly smile. He really was happy about it. I was the direct opposite, completely apprehensive about the whole thing. That healing took a large chunk of my mana. I didn’t want to do a second one.
“Mayor, regretfully, I haven’t yet learned how to heal sickness. I only know how to heal injuries.”
I wasn’t even lying. I healed a grand total of two people. So I didn’t actually know if I could heal someone with serious sickness.
I mean if it was that easy, no one would ever die from poison. Just heal a person from poisoning and you are done.
So there clearly was some limit. And I didn’t want to find it just as some person stood right in front of me with their hope completely crushed because of my magic not working.
And yes, I also wanted to decrease the number of potential people who would want healing. His sudden interjection made me a little panicky.
“I understand,” he didn’t lose his enthusiasm at all.
Instead, he walked towards the crowd. Later he came back with more than a dozen people. I wanted to shout at them to ask whether they were crazy. There was no way I had enough mana for that.
“I would like to finish the ceremony first, can you wait behind the stage?” I said while still pretending to be confident. My stomach felt pressured.
We went through all the baptisms and performed the coming-of-age ceremony and Starbiding. With my main duty out of the way, I sent Iri to fetch me my set of rejuvenation potions.
Heilschmerz, please, don’t drain me.
I made one timid step forward, but then I switched to confident walking. Upon closer inspection, most of the injured were young men.
Do I heal them just for them to injure themselves again during that game of theirs when they are blowing off steam before the winter?
“Just so you know. There will be no second healing if you injure yourself again. It would not please the goddess to throw away her gift,” I declared and then I went into prayer after prayer.
Fortunately, none of their injuries were serious. Some sprained ankles, some cuts from farming equipment, and a broken bone. All of those looked like they would heal on their own with enough time. It still took all of my mana and two rejuvenation potions to get through that. I was completely spent. When they began to leave to join the game of warf, I felt so drained that probably no feybeast would even bother to attack me.
I sat down in my seat and watched the game.
“How did it go?” Kantna asked.
I didn’t like his sudden interest in the whole issue.
“I wasted so many rejuvenation potions. Mana is one thing, but those were gifted to me. I can’t make those myself. I just thought I would heal one person, but then suddenly, there were so many. And as a noble, I couldn’t show weakness.”
I was still playing up my frustration. Telling him about how I felt inadequate was a prime example of showing weakness, but he didn’t seem to notice that paradox.
“As I said. It’s a waste of mana. There are too many commoners. There is no point in trying to heal them.”
“You are right. I will refrain from doing that in the next towns,” I said dejectedly.
He nodded with satisfaction. I was just glad that he didn’t dig further in regards to the whole prayer thing. When I thought about it, he probably didn’t even hear that it was a long prayer rather than just a shortened spell.
And while I only faked my agreement to his words, he wasn’t entirely wrong either. There wasn’t enough mana to reliably heal all commoners. Besides the first boy, I only dealt with small injuries that needed only time to heal anyway, and it took so much from me.
If I don’t regain enough mana by tomorrow, I will have to use a third rejuvenation potion just so I can fly to our next destination.
While healing instantly was indeed magical and cool, on a mass scale, modern medicine still beat magic because everyone could actually reliably get it. Manufacturing a hunderd pills or ten million pills, it didn’t matter. Me? I couldn’t scale up like that.
Luckily, I didn’t really have to think about that dilemma. We didn’t encounter any more injured children at our next stopping points. And after 4 more days, even my own injuries receded. I felt better, and my face finally had consistent color on both sides.