The Abbey of the Sisters of Immaculate Honor rested on a hillside, by the cresting ocean. The compound was made up of cloisters of buildings, the northmost of which was the chapel that they had dedicated to the Immaculate Honor herself, a disciple of the Singer of Truth. The enclosing walls were made of yellow granite, scripts buried within as security features. Interlinked paths surrounded by perfectly manicured lawns led from one building to the next, and in thirty minutes or so, it would be filled with the devoted, heading to their afternoon meal.
However, even before that time came, Catriona was interrupted from her prayer.
The first set of taps at her bedroom window broke her concentration. She'd been in the middle of reciting a devotional, and the exact pattern of the tap, rather than the tap itself, was what got her attention.
One. Two. Pause for two breaths. Three.
That was a code, from the last person she wanted to see right now. She opened her eyes and glared out of the window, where she could almost see the outline of the yellow bird in question.
Damn it, Vittoria.
The abbey was protected both by the statues and several layers of detection spells.
Yet, as always, Vittoria bypassed them with ease.
Catriona almost ignored the request. It had been years, nearly a decade, since they last spoke. Vittoria should no longer have power over her.
Yet she found herself straightening anyway.
Anger made her strides a little shorter than normal as she made her way to the outer forest.
Catriona had barely made it ten steps in when Vittoria appeared from between two birches.
“You look great,” were her first words, gaze tracing down Catriona's white habit. “Very priestly.”
The woman narrowed her eyes, and Vittoria grinned in that irritating way of hers.
“I thought I told you I never wanted to see you again.”
“You always say that, and yet, here we are." Vittoria raised an eyebrow. "You know you didn’t have to come out. You could have just rang the bell and alerted everyone that an intruder was in the forest. Then they would have captured and quartered me and forced me to sing hymns while roasting my mortal flesh over a holy flame. Or whatever it is you all do with your captives."
Catriona didn't reply, too irritated to think of something biting.
"You look good, Cat," Vittoria repeated, and Catriona could feel her face getting hotter, which of course only made her angrier.
“I thought I had gotten rid of your backdoors."
“You got rid of most of them. You forgot one. Perhaps on purpose." She winked, but then she suddenly got serious. "Listen, I need your help with something, and I don’t have a lot of time to chat.”
“Of course. The only times you seek me out are when you need my help.”
“And vice versa.” Vittoria raised an eyebrow. “Or are you forgetting our distance is a mutual thing?”
Catriona gritted her teeth, but she couldn’t possibly deny that. “What do you need my help with?”
“I have a creature with a specific type of...poisoning. I’m wondering if you can help me heal it.”
“What type of poisoning is it?”
She paused for a second, closed her eyes, and opened them again. "The creature has an instability borne out of the breakdown of a certain essence. Calor, to be specific. Calor is hyperactive and...jeez, I don't know how to explain it. Essentially, the creature is poisoned by the agitation of a dragon."
She frowned. "I don't think that's something that can be healed."
"I know. But..."
Vittoria paused again, and this time she frowned, her eyebrow ruffling in a way that showed intense focus. It was also what clued Cat into the fact that Vittoria was talking to someone else. She had likely split her consciousness between two events, and while her physical body was here, her mind was shared somewhere else. Usually, she didn’t give that away. She could typically carry conversations on both sides without pause, except when she was in battle or aggravated.
Whoever she was talking to must be exceptionally irritating.
Vittoria sighed. “I really don’t know how to explain it. However, I can show you an image of the spell form caused by the poison."
"Agitation doesn’t have a known spell form.”
"Yes, well, they insist it does."
“Who?”
“Just another researcher that I know. A very vexing one." She emphasized the word with an annoyed mutter that made Catriona both smug and envious.
“Anyway, they also insist that I recreate this image for you.” Vittoria used her magic to draw lines in the air, linking each together, until she had formed a twisted hexagon. She added more and more linkages and lines as she went on, until the spell resembled a long caterpillar, and she indicated each essence with its initial as they did when learning spell scripts.
And then she had random dots to the side.
"What are those?"
"Debris from the Calor. At least that's what I gather from their diatribe." She paused once more and said, "They want me to emphasize that the debris is small and charged the same as the Calor. It is moving and causing...what?"
"What?"
"No, not you." She held her hand up as she listened some more to what the other person was saying. She shook her head. "Never mind. That makes no sense, and I'm not saying that."
"How do they know this?"
"Divine revelation," she said without skipping a beat.
"Ah." That was odd. Vittoria didn't often believe in the divine at all, and thought that the ‘theory’ of the primordials leaving their disciples on Earth to protect humans was simply hogwash. She always said the primordials were indifferent to human suffering at best, and complicit at worst. She had a disdain for anything seemingly religious.
So to have her spend time with what seemed to be a crazed, spiritual researcher was certainly new.
Although what she was saying wasn't entirely crazy.
Essence sometimes remained charged after use, which was how manalings were formed. Manalings could alter living and nonliving things, creating monsters out of the mundane.
What made aggravation different was that it was more intrinsic, occurred much faster, and had more devastating consequences. That and it didn't require a series of broken spells to form. It didn't require a spell at all, just an angered or disturbed dragon, exuding ancient pheromones.
Regardless, they were both fatal.
"I don't know what you want me to do here," Catriona said. "I've never in my life seen anything like this. No one heals agitation."
"Just try. That's all I'm asking."
Cat stared at her and then back at the spell form she had traced. She paid closer attention. Part of it was wanting to help Vittoria, but the other part was that her curiosity was piqued. Though Vittoria seemed doubtful of this person's conclusion, she wouldn't be here if she didn't believe, on some level, that they might be right. She wasn't the type to act on superstition, so there would have to be evidence that this was something that could be done.
Cat had never seen a spell like this before. She thought retroactively on what mixtures would break the bonds of the spell without destroying a living creature. This worked in several ways: by adding a bond that would steal the ‘strength’ of another bond, by exchanging the essences to form a less harmful complex that would fade with time instead of what the poison was, a semi-permanent fixture that degraded the living organisms before the spell's endpoint. There were other mechanisms of magical healing, and the relationship between the essences and the human body was a complex and ever-growing field.
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However, she had enough experience to work backwards on the possible antidote, though she knew that they didn't have anything like that in their arsenal. In fact, she was fairly sure that nothing existed for humans, much less for animals.
However, the only regimen that would be similar was the one they gave to miners in the Calor caves who were exposed to too many impurities and soot, and hence developed degenerative illnesses from it. Research was still ongoing about what exactly caused the illnesses, but they knew that while the potion couldn't cure it, it could somewhat relieve the symptoms and extend lifetimes.
She told Vittoria as much, adding at the end, "Even if it worked, which I don't think it will, considering it's not exactly what you're looking for, it will only be a temporary fix. To truly cure it, you will likely need to find the source of the agitation and put a stop to it."
"So kill the dragon."
"Maybe. Or fix whatever is wrong with it."
Vittoria raised an eyebrow, releasing a breath. "Great. Fantastic. Can I see the potions to use in the regimen then?"
"Does she plan to use it? It's quite expensive."
"Don't worry. I can buy it off you. I'm just in a hurry, though. Do you have some here?"
“What would be the point? They won’t work for whatever it is you’re asking.”
“I know,” Vittoria said. “Believe me, I know.”
Catriona wondered who this individual was that could not only frustrate the Golden Beast, but make her do their bidding. Vittoria was stubborn by default, and whenever she bumped heads with someone, hers was always the harder one, and the one that eventually got its way. The only person who could manage her was…
“Is it your mother?” she asked. It would explain her frustration too, although Vittoria had likely not spoken to the other woman in decades.
Vittoria made a face. "Absolutely not. Look, if you have the antidote here, give it to me. I promise I'll bring you more ingredients by the end of the day to make more."
Catriona raised her eyebrow. "And why on earth should I do that?"
"Please," Vittoria said.
Cat bit her lip. She should say no. After everything they had gone through, she should not be doing such risky favors for Vittoria anymore.
That was the thing, though. Saying no had always been hard, partially because of everything they'd gone through. Especially since with the memories of the painful times also came memories of the good times, and all the moments that made the pain worth it.
She sighed heavily. “Fine. Wait here.”
Vittoria grinned, leading to a skipped heartbeat that Cat ignored.
She subtly bowed as she passed the other nuns on the way in. No one thought it was odd for her to approach the medicine room. They likely assumed she had found a wounded animal in the forest and wanted to treat it. However, if they did check the antidote she was taking, they would know that it wasn’t for animals.
Nevertheless, they wouldn’t take inventory until later this week, and so as long as Vittoria brought the ingredients back in time for Catriona to make more, they would be fine.
She returned to Vittoria, who was leaning against a tree. She straightened when she arrived.
When Cat handed it to her, Vittoria beamed in a way that rivaled the brightness of the sun. It made it hard for her to complete the rest of her sentence.
"This one will instantly relieve the symptoms," she said as she lifted the green vial. "This other one should adjust it to bring you as close to the spell-form you gave me as possible. When mixed with human blood, the binders will be broken, and the resulting complex will be what takes the form of something similar to your given spell form. Use a one-to-two ratio. The last one is for continued maintenance. None of this will actually heal the creature. Also, I’m not entirely sure how it will react with animals, as this is used to treat humans. It might be fatal depending on the species.”
“Understood." Her smile was warm. "Thank you, Catriona.”
Catriona swallowed and gave her a clipped nod. In a second, Vittoria was gone.
"Stupid," Catriona muttered to herself, while the turmoil was within. "You should have closed the damn backdoor."
***
Vittoria arrived and handed over the antidote to Arielle.
"Don't say I never do anything for you," she said.
“Thank you,” Arielle said, and focused on the antidote as Vittoria relayed all the information that Catriona had said.
She first mixed drops of the two antidotes in the given ratio. Then she took a few drops of her own blood and added it, and watched them work in the air and watched what they formed.
What they formed was very complicated.
She knew she wouldn't understand everything about the spell form, but she just needed to understand the part that actually dealt with the free mini-orbs.
“By the way, I talked to the dean,” Vittoria said.
“About what?”
“We’ll get into it later. Essentially, another student caught me in the cave after hours, and I had to lie and get the dean to corroborate it. We had other conversations while there, but I think we’ll save it until we’re done.” Vittoria coughed. “I’ll give you half an hour while I travel and try to look for the source of all this nonsense. If you haven’t solved it by then, I’m taking you back.”
“Alright,” Arielle said, and Vittoria went off to scout ahead and left Arielle with the portal bird and the dragon, who had found a small lizard and was munching on it.
That was who Arielle spoke to as she analyzed the spell form.
“That must be another stabilizing complex,” she said. “And that’s the part that should soothe any pain symptoms. And this thing…I don’t know what that does yet. I wish I could have talked to Vittoria’s friend myself. Vittoria didn’t explain anything well.” With their conversation, Arielle had finally admitted to Vittoria that she could see essences, to which the Archmage had rolled her eyes and said, “Really? Shocker.”
However, because they couldn’t relay that to her friend, the message was stilted, so Ari had to adjust the potion herself.
It took her a few minutes of analysis before she spotted what she was looking for. It was an extremely complicated structure, several layers upon layers, one that she would not have been able to guess at, but it essentially had all the mini orbs of Vacu in that complex engaged in a three-dimensional concave shape that made them highly aggressive in seeking Calor.
It was held by overlaying symbols and a rune-bound complex in the potion that kept it from dissolving from instability. That was the beauty of the potion after all, that everything could be held together like that, and also that it was less likely to cause harm than its milder mechanism of release.
Arielle put her hand up and copied the exact complex with her orbs, using the air as fluid that held it together. Ari turned it from a concave into a full circle, adding more, surrounding the free mini-orb with the complex. The mini-orb got trapped by the Vacu, with no way to escape. Vacu attached to it, but while it jolted back and fought to be free, it hit the other Vacu in the circle. There was nowhere for it to go.
Ari kept tweaking the structure, shifting it closer, until the mini-orb was attached to multiple essences at the same time, finally stilling its movement.
She waited to see what would happen after the spell degraded. It would take some time, but she could already see the light dimming, the activity slowing.
She had succeeded in dimming the mini-orb.
However, the question now was, how would she get it into the serpent?
She tried to mix the potion with the serpent’s blood the same way she had done with hers, but it curdled. Mixing her infected blood with the serpent's also caused the complex to shift around in a weird way.
Her only choice was to use the isolated spell-form without the stabilizing liquid.
Could she put it through its mouth somehow and have it disperse through the vein into the right parts of the body? That would be difficult. Unlike with Yseult’s spell form, which had to do with timing, this had to do with entire conglomerates of units moving as one, and the motion had to be smooth to prevent the layers from separating in the creature's blood.
It was hard enough stabilizing it in the air, but considering that the free mini-orbs would be moving rapidly and she would be chasing them, that would be even harder. It would be much better to stabilize it with a liquid.
But she didn’t have time to make a stabilizing liquid. She had to do this now.
In the meantime, Vittoria warned her through the portal bird. “I’ll remind you, the potion is for humans. It could be harmful to animals."
"I’m not giving it the potion.”
"What are you doing?”
“Presenting the healing complex.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I isolated the part of the potion that gets rid of the free mini-orb. Now I’m going to give it to the serpent without the potion.”
“You can do that? Never mind. Of course, you can.” She muttered. “Still, even after you get rid of the cause of the disease, how are you going to heal the rest of the damage without the potion?”
That was a good question.
“What will happen if we leave the creature with the damage? Could it eventually resolve itself?” she said.
“No. They will die,” she said. “Dragons are pretty sturdy, but even the young dragon will likely not survive long.”
“Would a healing spell not work?” Healing spells took care of bruises all the time.
“This isn’t a bruise. I don’t know any healers trained with dragons and this level of corruption.”
Arielle glanced at the dragon, who was once again making sounds of pain, and then the snake, which was still resting there, staring down at her. She got the sense that the snake knew what she was trying to do, as it had stopped hissing at her. Either that, or it was simply resigned to its fate.
Like Elric was.
Her heart squeezed in sympathy. It occurred to her that what she was doing might be hopeless. The two creatures might die anyway.
Yet she refused to give up.
She would figure out how to heal the rest of it. But first she had to get rid of the thing plaguing the serpent, the dragon, and the entire forest.
She began directing the complex into the snake, opening its mouth and leading it down. She used Orion to visualize what she was doing, holding herself perfectly still so as not to break the synergy of the different complexes.
She pushed it down the snake’s throat, going slow, then into its stomach. Once it became incorporated into its body, she began to use her other hand to corral all the free mini-orbs towards it, but using the other essences to chase it down.
She saw the complex work on the first mini-orb, then on the second one, simultaneously easing the bonds free. Okay, good. She had to hold it in place for some time when it threatened to separate, and once it stabilized, she continued the slow glide.
“Arielle,” Vittoria interrupted, sounding urgent. “We need to go.”
“I can’t.” If she left now, she would have to let go of what she was doing
“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. I found it.”
“The dragon?”
“No. The thing that harmed it.” Her voice sounded grave. “Come here.”
“But…” The serpent kept staring at her, and Vittoria’s voice hardened.
“I’m not asking, Arielle. You need to come to me. Now.”
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