Chapter Text
Rosa Farrell never wanted to be a white mage.
It had been predestined since her birth, determined by the inherited healing talent of her powerful mother, Joanna Farrell, a famed white mage in Baron’s military. Rosa had grown up with the hum of holy magic in her veins, recognizing when something was wrong with a person’s body, seeing how it could be mended, knowing how the muscle fibers and broken skin might stitch back together, how to correct wounds with neat white seams.
The first time she cast a spell, she’d been no more than four, going on her first adventure without the security of a nearby parent, permission be damned. Baron Village seemed different without the lens of authority, full of possibilities, nothing stopping her from just following her whim. She climbed a tree to get a better view of the village streets, already trying to memorize their layout. On her way back down, she slipped, scraping her knee against the tree’s rough bark as she tumbled to the ground.
After a brief cry over its stinging pain, she inspected the wound, recognizing the wrongness of it across the surface of her skin. She inhaled, tasting the same tension in the air as when her mother cast, and suddenly the arcane words were in her mouth, sighing out of her as she exhaled. The breaks in skin across her knee gently sealed closed, leaving behind only a smear of blood as evidence anything had happened.
As she grew, Rosa tried to ignore magic’s siren call, instead taking to archery, relishing the growth of her muscles as she continued daily practices, soon finding it easy to focus and sink her arrows into her intended target. She watched her two best friends, Kain Highwind and Cecil Harvey, with increasing envy as they practiced together. It seemed so easy for them to swing their weapons and just be good at it, without worry about how they looked or how the world perceived them, their only concern in trying to best the other. She also envied their rivalry, resenting that neither of them saw her as a participant in their ongoing contests, but always as a perpetual observer and sometimes admirer.
Instead, Rosa competed with herself, setting her own challenges, and meeting them. She tested her accuracy, her speed, her ability to move on the field and still focus. Sometimes she impressed the boys with her ability to keep up with them, despite being younger and smaller, but more often, she saw them holding back, suggesting less dangerous tasks for her, delegating her to the sidelines.
She kept her magical talents to herself, not letting any instructor or her mother know. Only Kain and Cecil had any idea, being direct recipients of her healing, whenever mishap found them – Cecil, with a stick deep in the fleshy part of his palm, having tripped during a chase; Kain sporting a split lip, from a fight with another boy who had mouthed off about Kain’s late father; her own skimmed palms, skin ripped off as she desperately held on to a tree branch held jointly by the boys ( her boys) , nearly carried off by the Baron river as she tried to cross.
There was nothing inherently wrong with being a white mage, but Rosa wanted to be in the thick of it with Kain and Cecil, just as eager to show off as they were. She knew white mages went into battle, her own mother having wild stories, but Joanna was always just helping, another was swinging the sword, killing the monster, being the victor.
The worst part about Rosa’s white magic was how good she already was, without formal training. It came easily to her, magic pooling in her palms, shaping into right spell. At night, she’d sneak books on white magic from her mother’s study, reading through them, practicing spells under her tented blankets.
Rosa suspected her father might have known, once remarking that Rosa seemed an especially graceful child, never returning home with any injuries from play. She’d only been eight, then, showing up that evening with a new cut, crusty with dried blood across her shin. As her mother cleaned the wound, then healed it, her father caught eyes with Rosa and winked, but never said a word. He died shortly after that, lost in an airship accident, so she never knew for certain.
Rosa managed to keep it a secret until she turned thirteen, her ultimate downfall being too good at white magic. Cecil had started dark knight training, using a terrible technique that required wounding himself to gather power. He’d had an accident, grievously hurting himself, and there’d been so much blood that Rosa didn’t think, she just started casting, trying to stop the blood loss, trying to keep Cecil awake and not slipping off, desperate not to lose him.
In the aftermath, Joanna had attended to Cecil, recognizing the difficulty of healing a dark knight’s wound. She’d gone to Rosa’s room then and searched through it, finding Rosa’s hidden books on white magic, her notes, her tools. It had been waiting, all laid out on Rosa’s bed when she came home, Joanna asking, why didn’t you tell me? And Rosa having no good answer.
They fought fiercely, as mothers and teenage daughters sometimes do, both yelling and struggling to make their point, wishing the other would just listen . Rosa, not wanting to be a white mage despite how good she might be, wanting to be more than just her mother’s daughter; Joanna, insisting that Rosa was wasting her talents, that she couldn’t always chase after her friends, that white mages were highly regarded and respected, that this was her inheritance. It ended with each slamming their own bedroom doors, both pacing the floor of their rooms, furious and fuming.
It took two days until Rosa spoke to Joanna again, breaking the stalemate. It had been Kain that convinced her, insisting that things would still be the same, that she would still be with them, begging her to come back to classes, better as a white mage than nothing at all. Feeling the tide of destiny against her, Rosa finally agreed to start white mage training.
Despite her initial and ongoing reluctance, Rosa loved being a white mage.
She was good at it, surprising no one, least of all herself. Learning white magic came easier than any other subject, including archery, and that simultaneously thrilled and infuriated Rosa, wishing she could apply this latent talent in literally any other skill but this one. Rosa, meticulously mending together shattered bone shards in the legs of a boy who had fallen from his roof, reminding her sharply of Kain’s antics in their childhood; reassuring a worried mother over a fussy baby, then offering herbal remedies to ease the child’s sore gums as new teeth erupted; field dressing a wounded soldier’s open belly, unable to use magic until she could confirm there was no debris left behind from the savage bite of a strange, unknown monster. And of course, healing Cecil after his dark knight training, touching him as gently as she could, saving the tenderest part of her heart for him alone. She did it all and she did it exceptionally well.
It was hard to hate something she was so damn good at doing. She lived for the relieved exhale of her patients, finally able to ease a terrible pain for them, offering desperately needed respite in a fog of suffering. She loved their gratitude, struggling to stay humble under their praise.
But still, she longed for something more, something she saw Kain and Cecil striving for through their endless weapons drills, perfecting their techniques. To be powerful, exercising superiority over another, proving to be the best – the prospect seemed so enticing to Rosa, like she could finally prove to everyone around her that she was capable.
In Baron’s military, the white mage division was defined by its two halves. The first were mages who remained stationed in Baron’s infirmary, waiting for the return of soldiers, treating them then. These mages also serviced the community, often making house calls throughout the village, tending to the sick and injured. The second half, however, were white mages specially trained to provide support during the chaos of battle, coordinating with other soldiers, helping to pursue success. They joined other divisions on all their missions.
Over the next three years, Rosa doggedly pursued the requirements to become a combat white mage, training further in weapons, able to competently wield both staves and rods, along with her favored bow and arrow. She was physically fit, able to sprint for long distances, shoulder heavy packs, and lift a man’s dead weight, even with unhelpful and sprawling limbs. She had an extensive knowledge of potions and elixirs along with the training to determine how and when to use them.
There was only one requirement left for Rosa to fulfil, to prove herself ready for combat and ready to join Baron’s military. Every year, the participating Baron cadets joined an expedition that ventured from Mysidia to Mount Ordeals. There were several groups in the expedition, mostly pilgrims journeying to offer prayers to the base of the mountain, but there were also young mages, from both Mysidia and Baron, there to learn firsthand how to employ their holy magic against the undead.
It was a strange thing, turn a thing of healing into hurting, to use the blessings of holy magic to inflict pain and death. For the first time in her white mage training, Rosa couldn’t quite grasp the concept from the instructional text alone. Further frustrating was that she couldn’t practice, as white magic could only be deployed offensively against undead creatures, and no such creatures wandered the Baron forests or plains.
“But how does it work?” Rosa asked her mother, one night as they cleared the dinner dishes from the table. “None of my instructors can give me a straight answer. Either they’ve never been in real combat, or they give me vague platitudes about serving the Light, which make no sense.”
Joanna set the small stack of plates and utensils inside the sink with a clatter, then turned to face Rosa, who stood with her arms crossed, jaw set a determined angle. When Joanna did not answer right away, Rosa’s serious expression deepened with a frown. “Well?” Rosa asked, full of teenage impatience.
“It is… complicated,” Joanna said, and at Rosa’s exasperated sigh, she continued, “Oh, stop pouting and listen for a moment.” Joanna fiddled with the front of her apron, nervously twisting the strings that tied it tight to her middle. “We are conduits for holy magic to bring goodness and Light into the world, to right wrongs and mend wounds.” Joanna paused, glancing up at Rosa, who still wore her frown but did not interrupt. “Most of the time, that means healing and undoing damage. But sometimes…” and here she hesitated again.
“Sometimes?” Rosa softly prompted, no longer sounding impatient or sulking.
“Sometimes,” Joanna continued, sounding more certain, “there are creatures so obscene, that their very existence is an affront to nature and the Light. All that can be done is to destroy them, so they cannot return and spread their perverse magic.”
“Like the undead?” Rosa asked, her blue eyes wide with both fear and shock.
Joanna gave a little nod, her eyes briefly closing. “A white mage must fashion their magic into a weapon, to sever the creature’s blasphemous hold to consciousness. It is not unlike cutting off a gangrenous limb to spare the rest of the body. If allowed, the undead will spread their infection and rot through the world, until nothing is left of the living or the Light.”
“Do you… hate them?” Rosa asked next, her voice small. “Is that how holy magic is repurposed, to punish and hurt them?”
Joanna shook her head, but her voice was gentle as she answered, “No, not hate. There is no room for hate to grow in the Light’s presence.” Joanna turned back to the sink and began rinsing dishes as she spoke. “It is more pity, for their profane existence. They are an abomination to all that we have sworn as white mages. We protect the living and ease the pain of the dying – that is the cycle of life and death and how it should always be. Any who seek to usurp that balance must be destroyed, without hesitation, to maintain the natural order of things.”
Rosa came up beside Joanna, taking a clean plate from her, wiping it dry on her own apron. She didn’t say anything, her eyes distant in thought as she pondered Joanna’s words. They spent the next few minutes in silence as they cleaned the few dishes, the only sound between them the clink of a dish or glass.
Finally, it was Joanna who spoke, breaking the quiet. “You don’t have to go to Mount Ordeals, you know. You can have a respectable career right here in Baron, helping others and never worrying about monsters or death magic.”
Rosa set the last glass in the cupboard, then clicked the door closed. “I’m going,” Rosa said, her voice full of a new resolve. “I’m going to be a combat mage.”
“Rosa,” Joanna said gently, summoning Rosa’s attention back to her. “Don’t do this just so you can follow Kain and Cecil. You have a gentle spirit; you don’t need to expose yourself to the harsh realities of a battlefield.”
Rosa immediately scowled, turning away from her mother, not wanting to get back in the one constant fight in their household. “This isn’t about them,” Rosa said tightly, then yanked off her apron and threw it on the table as she passed. Then she stopped suddenly, whirling around to confront her mother again. “It’s about supporting Baron’s soldiers. Whether that’s Kain and Cecil or anyone else, I want to be the best I can be.” She paused a moment, then added, “For Baron.”
Joanna said nothing for a long while, just considering her daughter, a golden echo of herself, more like Joanna than even she wanted to admit. Finally, Joanna nodded and spoke softly, “You can go to Mount Ordeals.”
Rosa bristled, about to open her mouth and inform her mother that she was going to Mount Ordeals with or without permission. Rosa had grown up with a constant commentary on what she should or shouldn’t do, as a girl, as a student, as a cadet, as a white mage. Not once had she let anyone’s definition of Rosa limit her actions or ambitions and she certainly wasn’t about to start.
But then Rosa saw her mother’s face, the sudden sadness, a sort of aching melancholy yawning wide to engulf Joanna. Rosa’s defiant anger was gone, her heart squeezing tight with sympathy. She did not understand her mother’s new sorrow, only saw the pain it wrought, as plainly as a wound cracking open flesh.
“Thank you,” Rosa said instead.