What We Do to Survive

To my surprise, it was almost shockingly easy to get Lea in to see a healer. The guard at the entrance to the school’s compound had taken one look at the girl in my arms and called over someone to replace him as he personally led me into the complex.

As we passed through the tall gate, I felt powerful wards brush up against my tightly compressed mana core and froze for a moment, but they did not seem to find my presence openly threatening so I continued onward. I didn’t like being under hostile wards, but hopefully nothing would happen. They felt like the sort that had to be manually invoked or triggered under predetermined circumstances. As long as I didn’t do anything stupid, nothing would happen.

We emerged into a wide, open courtyard filled with students. There were hundreds of them milling around and more streaming in out of the main building. I reflexively readied my magic in case something happened, then forcefully compressed it back into my core. No one felt particularly powerful, with most of the students hovering around the first three circles and some rare standouts pushing as far as the fifth, but that was no reason to think there might not be someone more powerful around. With my magic purposely suppressed to the level of a first-circle amateur, I wouldn’t be able to see through anyone else doing the same.

Several people stopped and stared at us, focusing mostly on the guard guiding me and the girl in my arms. I guessed it wasn’t every day that someone dressed like I was currently showed up here, particularly not under these sort of circumstances. A few people pointed at Lea’s unmoving form, whispering quietly to the people around them, but no one moved to block our path.

As we wove through the crowd, I looked around with interest at the tall central keep and the many buildings littered within the thick walls of the fortress-like school. I’d heard of Lightcastle before, it was the most prestigious place of learning for mages in the country and I had once fantasized of attending and learning all sorts of powerful magic. Of course, that had been a pipe dream even then. Lighcastle did not accept any peasants within its walls, in fact none of the mage schools in Xethis did. Even merchant families had only a tiny chance of getting their children accepted, magical education was almost exclusively reserved for the children of the rich and powerful. Still, things had mostly worked out in the end. If those pests I’d had to deal with were representative of the skill level of the students, I was lucky I hadn’t ended up studying here.

As we passed by several walls, I looked with interest at the white marble that made up nearly every building in the school. Within the pearlecent stone, I could make out shimmering flecks that glowed to my mana sense. Looking closer, I could feel that the flecks were part of a vast system of wards, their patterns forming parts of three dimensional spellforms inside the stone. It was a very neat design, and one I’d never encountered before. I wanted to examine it further, I was particularly curious how they’d managed to embed the flecks without damaging any of the surrounding marble, but now was not the time. Maybe I would come back at some point.

We were met at the door to the medical building by a young woman wearing a bright white apron over her winter dress. She gasped when she saw the state Lea was in and beckoned me into the building after her. The guard gave her a sharp nod and left, hurrying back towards the gate.

Inside, she quickly unrolled a stretcher and had me lower Lea onto the floating cloth. Then, she passed it off to another, identically dressed, woman who gently guided the floating frame deeper into the building. I moved to follow after her, but the first woman stepped in front of me. “Only trained medical personnel and patients are allowed in the back. Thank you for bringing her here, but you are free to return to your labor now.” I inwardly sighed. Apparently, dressing like a peasant had not been the right choice today.

Staring the shorter woman directly in the eyes, I tried not to get angry. She was only doing her job. “I am trained in medicine.”

She tilted her head to the side and crossed her arms, “I don’t care what sort of crude procedures your kind practice in the fields. Get out of here, the guards never should have let you pass in the first place.”

Just wonderful. Maybe I could have argued around, something about being a close friend or some other nonsense, but I refused to let her out of my sight right now and the other nurse was rapidly moving out of my sensory range. I let the suppression I’d been maintaining on my core lapse for a moment and pressed down on the nurse with the full weight of my mana.

The woman’s knees buckled and she staggered to the side, only barely catching herself on the side of the desk beside her. “I’m going to go with her.” I said simply.

“Of… of course sir. Jus… just down the hallway and to the right. Room nineteen.” She continued to stammer something, but I ignored it as I brushed past her and into the brightly illuminated hallway that led deeper into the building.

Lighcastle’s medical ward was arranged in a way I’d never seen before. To be fair, that didn’t say much about it, I’d only ever been to a few such buildings, and they’d all varied wildly. The one at Avalon was a multi-level maze-like series of corridors and locked rooms that had been carefully arranged to fit within the spherical boundary of a ‘ring of recovery’. The treatment station I’d visited in Armouth had been a tiny, cramped building with only two rooms and staffed by a single, horribly overworked mage.

From what I could tell, the building here was a single long hallway with rooms branching off on either side. I could feel more rooms above me on the second floor, but they were mostly empty and the wards around them made them feel more like labs and workshops than somewhere for patients to go.

I caught up with the other nurse as she was carefully maneuvering the floating stretched through the wide doorway of room nineteen. She gave me an odd look, but didn’t say anything, for which I was grateful. I didn’t want any trouble, particularly not in a place so surrounded by potentially hostile spellcasters. Hopefully the other one wouldn’t make a huge deal of it.

I stood silently in the corner as the nurse carefully transferred Lea to a bed by way of simply removing the floating rods that had been holding up the stretcher after lowering it over the mattress. She proceeded to cast several diagnostic spells, a few of which I was familiar with and the rest that I committed to memory. Once she was done, she made several notes on a board by the bed and stepped away from the bed as an older man rushed into the room.

I had sensed him coming from halfway across the building. Compared to the rest of the mages I’d seen so far, he stood head and shoulders above them, his mana reserves marking him as a fifth or sixth circle spellcaster. He was wearing a white robe with red trim and unfamiliar markings on the sleeves and went directly to the bed, firing a series of questions at the nurse without looking at her.

She answered quickly and concisely, using several terms I had never come across, but I understood the gist of it. She had several broken bones, a concussion, and three of her ribs were fractured. Additionally, there was bruising all over her body and she was bleeding from several scrapes along her legs. That wasn’t great, but it was nothing a competent healer couldn’t fix with a bit of work, so I wasn’t worried.

It was only when the healer asked what had happened that the nurse trailed off. “The peasant brought her in,” she said after a moment, “I… haven’t had a chance to ask any more questions. I’m not sure why Clara let him pass, but maybe he knows something?”

For the first time, the healer looked up and turned to look at me. He seemed surprised for a moment, and then I felt his own mana brush up against mine for a moment and he nodded. “It's fine. Anything you can tell us, young man? Looks like she’s been through a bit of a beating.”

“Exactly that. I was just passing through and ran into a couple of kids ganging up on her in an alleyway. Not sure what they were fighting about, but I broke it up and decided to bring her here.” I decided immediately to leave out the specifics. If those idiots had beens students here, it would only bring more trouble than it was worth. Hopefully they would go to their own family healers, I’d made sure the injuries I’d given them were painful but not hard to deal with.

“Ah, yes, that lines up with what I’m seeing here. Thank you for stepping in. You did the right thing to bring her here, she’s one of ours so we will take care of her at no charge. You are free to go, or at least take a seat. This should only take a little while, though she will have to sleep it off afterwards.”

“I’ll stay.”

“Of course. Now, let me see…”

Mana danced across his fingers, forming an intricate web of spellforms over his cupped hands that quickly collapsed into a bright ball of golden light. Murmuring something under his breath, he slowly ran the ball over her chest and I saw her body go slack, a quiet gasp slipping past her parted lips.

The healer tutted quietly and continued, recasting the same spell several times and using several bits of first-circle magic to gently move her body around to give him access to the injured areas. It was rather interesting to watch, I’d expected him to use a variety of specialized medical spells like I’d seen described in the books I’d seen, but instead he was defaulting to this single piece of magic. I hadn’t realized there was such a versatile healing spell under eighth circle, but it seemed I’d been mistaken.

Maybe this was one of those things the presenter had mentioned? She had said the headmaster and his students specialized in light and healing magic, and this seemed to incorporate elements of both. I was unable to identify exactly what was going on, I’d never seen quite a few of the spellforms he was using and only had surface level proficiency with healing magic, but it was educational nonetheless.

As he’d said, the healing itself didn’t take long at all. Dealing with the surface level injuries, the bruising and scrapes, only took as long as it did to drag the golden sphere across the damaged skin. The broken bones only took a tiny bit longer, he cast a second circle spell that ensured the bones set correctly and then held the golden sphere over the break for roughly thirty seconds. Only her concussion took slightly larger to deal with, the healer hemming and hawing over her as his fingers gently probed at her temples.

I was very impressed by his work. I hadn’t expected to find anyone nearly this skilled working at a school of all places. This was the sort of healer I expected to be earning a massive retainer working for some powerful organization or as the personal healer to a duke. Healers were always in demand and as such their services rarely came cheap. In fact, healing was well known as one of the most lucrative possible paths for a talented mage, though the specialization was somewhat rare at Avalon for obvious reasons.

When he was done, he straightened up smoothly and turned back to face me with a smile. “All done. She just needs a few hours to sleep it off and she’ll be all good by the end of the evening.”

“Thank you,” I said, extending a hand which he shook, “Orion.”

“Calvin, apprentice to our lord Lightbarer. On behalf of the headmaster, thank you for bringing her in. We can not control what our students do outside of school hours, but we always strive to care for them as best we can.”

An… interesting attitude. Still, it was never a good idea to be rude to healers. You never knew when you might need their help. “Of course, I was happy to help. Do you mind if I wait with her? I feel… obligated, and I have nowhere urgent to be…”

“Of course, of course, stay with her if you wish!” He exclaimed cheerfully. “One of the assistants will just move her into a recovery room and you can take a seat.” He jerked his head at the nurse, who’d returned a moment ago after stepping out. “She can show you where to go. I’m afraid I must run, duty calls.”

“Don’t let me hold you.”

With a parting nod, he rushed out of the room again. For a mage, he was impressively athletic. I couldn’t feel much of anything in the way of circulation, so I assumed that must be mostly natural muscle. The man had been built like a brick wall, not quite what I expected out of a healer.

The assistant ushered me out of the room, telling me that she needed to change the patient into something more appropriate for resting in, and pointed me to the room she would be moving Lea into. I took a seat in one of the cushioned armchairs beside the bed and set in for a long evening, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do with my day, but it would give me time to process the last hour and I could always do more internal practice. Then, the door flew open to admit a lithe, dark-haired woman who looked around for a moment, then zeroed in on me. She stared at me with bloodshot eyes and almost screamed out, “Where is she! What did you do to her! I heard… where is she!”

I closed my eyes and let out a hissing breath through my teeth. What was it now for gods’ sake?