Aeternitas, M Mixson [e books for reading txt] 📗

Chapter 16: The Plague

The plague hit hard. Harder than anyone had ever thought it could have. First, it started off slowly, only taking one or two people at a time. Then it was three or four. It slowly escalated to seven a week. The symptoms that appeared at first were high fevers and chills. Then rashes began to break out. Soon the whole body would be covered in a rash. To the ill it would feel like they were burning up inside. Their throats would swell and they would be unable to swallow anything. As they were unable to swallow or eat anything they began to waste away. As they began to waste away their bodies began to deteriorate. Because of that their immune systems couldn’t heal themselves. It was a cycle that they were unable to break, nothing could have helped them. In the beginning it was isolated; only small towns. As doctors came to try and help they brought it back to bigger towns and then the cities began to collapse. As people died and became sick food production stopped, and as food production stopped more people became sick and died. The whole world began to fall apart. As the world began to fall apart the people themselves began to fall apart. The land and the people suffered together, becoming one and the same.

Eian stood in the capital city over his dying grandmother. Blose held his hand tightly and looked up at him with sadness in her eyes.

“Eian…” she whispered. “Don’t look so sad. I always knew I was going to die, and there’s no helping it at this point. I’d hate for you to get sick too.”

Eian looked down. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“Die. I can’t die – my magic prevents it.”

Blose smiled. “I won’t ask how that’s possible, I know that I won’t understand it.”

Eian clasped her hand tighter. “I’ll stay with you. I won’t sleep until you’re better.”

“Until I’m dead. I’m not getting better, darling.”

“I’ll still believe you are.”

She patted his hand gently and smiled up at him.

There was a bit of commotion at the next bed over as a body convulsed. Eian looked over and there was a young man there, older than him, but not old. He looked ravaged with pain and sadness and his hands were clamped on the sheet. The person, or soon to be body, lying in the bed was that of an older man. His body convulsed again and he opened his mouth and let out a little moan as he tried to speak.

“Don’t talk Father,” the young man’s voice was low and worried.

“Zese...”

Eian looked down at his grandmother. Her hand was slackening in his and Eian bent down.

“Grandmother! Grandmother! Please look at me!”

She looked up warmly at him, “Eian…please…don’t give…me…that…look,” her voice trailed off as she convulsed.

“Don’t talk, conserve your breath.”

Blose’s hand slowly slipped from his. “Grandma,” he whispered forlornly as he bent over and kissed her cheek. He squeezed her hand one last time before letting go.

As he turned away he caught the eye of one of the doctors. He was a middle aged man who had the start of wrinkles around his eyes but his hands were still dexterous like those of a painters.

The man approached him and asked, “Has your family member passed?”

“Yes, she’s in bed number one hundred and eighty two. Her name is – was – Blose.”

He licked his lips. “Uhm. Well then. I should…” he looked over at the other bed as the older man convulsed again. The middle aged man followed his gaze.

“They’re nobles, but at this point, nothing matters anymore. Rank, status, power, money, none of it. Everybody is dying.”

Eian let his eyes drop. “I think I might be able to relieve that man’s pain some.”

The man nodded. “Go to him then, and work your magic.”

Eian smiled at the phrasing and as he turned to go the man spoke again, “I’m Ohiel.”

“Eian.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“And you.” The man nodded and turned away as he headed to another patient in need.

Eian approached the bed of the noble and touched the young man’s shoulder.

“Excuse me. I think that I might be able to help.”

The young man looked up and narrowed his eyes at him. “Really? You think you can help a dying man? Save his life when you so obviously couldn’t save your grandmother’s own life?”

“That’s different, she asked me not to. She said it was her time to go and to let her die.”

“And I don’t want your help, whatever you’re offering. Plenty of people offered me solutions to this illness but none worked. I refuse to pay for something that won’t work.”

“I’m not asking you to pay, just watch.”

The young man narrowed his eyes but stepped back and nodded.

‘Isia…tell me how to do this.’

‘Eian…this is much more powerful magic than anything you’ve ever done and it’s on another person. You could fail…’

‘I don’t particularly care about that right at this moment. Just tell me what to do!’

He head Isia sigh in his mind but her acknowledgement. ‘Okay. You need to draw this sigil,’ she flashed the image in his mind ‘on his torso. Do that and then I’ll talk you through the rest of the process. It may take a while, so don’t rush. This is not something you can fix if you make a mistake.’

‘Got it.’

Carefully he pulled his pen out of his bag and began to sketch the sigil onto the man’s torso. His son reached out an arm and snarled,

“HEY! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Saving your father, now step back otherwise I don’t think I will be able to heal him in time.”

The man reluctantly stepped back and Eian got to work again. Once the sigil was finished he quickly wiped his hands on his pants and spoke to Isia yet again.

‘Now what?’

‘You need to start the healing chant I taught you. Do you remember? If not I can repeat it before you.’

‘I think I remember it, but repeat it anyways.’

‘Remember, once you begin you can’t stop. Make the choice now.’

‘I’m going to save him.’

‘Good.’ Exactly like I thought, Isia thought to herself, he’s becoming stronger, forging out on his own. With the death of his grandmother he doesn’t really have anything else to live for. His two school friends are also already dead or so they said.

She could hear him muttering the chant under his breath as he moved his hands above the man’s torso.

‘Okay, now let one palm rest over his heart,’ she told him.

Eian placed one hand over the man’s heart and continued to chant as he waited for the next instruction.

‘Slowly move it in circles.’ Was the next command.

Eian followed her orders and began to move his one hand in circles.

The man broke in, “What exactly are you doing? What is this? Are you hurting him?”

Eian didn’t deign to answer the man’s pleas but just kept working.

‘Now, this is working with all four normal elements plus light and dark. Essentially the darkness has taken over this man’s body and isn’t letting go. You need to exorcise the dark and replace it with light. Healing light. It’s a complicated process that you learned how to do on yourself but on another person it is ten times more complicated.’

‘Okay, so what do I do?’

‘Start by calling on the first element, earth. Mind you, these all must be healing elements so be careful when you call on them and make sure you call the right one.’

Eian slowly reached out with his mind and called to the healing earth which responded with such a quickness it nearly surprised Eian.

‘The next element is air. Healing air, call on that next.’

Eian called out to air which also responded unusually easily. He took a breath as he steadied himself and held onto the two already called elements.

‘Now water. This is a little bit of a harder one. Water doesn’t like to work with the other elements.’

Eian coaxed water to him after a few minutes of bartering with it. Finally he only had fire left of the four main elements.

‘Fire is the trickiest of the four core elements. Fire likes to burn and destroy all the other elements. You have to be careful when you use it because if it scares them all of…’

‘I can’t complete the cure.’

‘Right.’

Eian managed to contain fire before he heard Isia’s voice in his mind.

‘The final element is the healing light. The healing light will over power every other element – it will join them all together which is what you want.’

Swallowing Eian nodded and stopped chanting as he drowned the other elements in healing light. He began to feel them bond and form a solid connection. And then, the light dashed through the noble man’s chest.

Eian could feel it eviscerating the darkness, destroying it on all fronts until finally it was all gone.

Eian sighed and leaned back.

Zese caught the young man as he fainted but nearly dropped him once he had touched the young man’s skin.

He was…he was…it was him!

Chapter 17: Realizations

Zese stared down at the young man’s face frantically. He brushed the young man’s hair to the side to get a much better look at his face. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he lifted him into his arms. He turned to the middle aged man who had been attending his father.

“Is there a place where he can rest?”

The middle aged man tapped his lip thoughtfully. “There’s an inn around the corner from here. I own part of it so there’s always a few rooms reserved in case I have guests. You can borrow one of those rooms for the meantime.”

“Thank you,” Zese smiled at him gratefully.

“Ah, you need to tell the manager Ohiel sent you.” The middle aged man patted Zese’s arm. “You shouldn’t worry about him anyways. He’ll wake up soon enough. The magic just exhausted him.”

Magic? Zese thought to himself. What did that mean? He didn’t know of anyone still alive who was able to use magic. Was this boy able to use it? Was he a true User? He looked down at the sleeping face and felt his heart stutter for a moment. He thinned his lips and hefted the boy higher into his arms before taking off to the inn.

He knocked on the door with his foot as he couldn’t open it due to his hands being full of the young man. The door opened to reveal a handsome older woman. She waved them in.

“Hello, I’m Iasui. How can I help you?”

“I – we – need a room for the night and Ohiel said we could borrow one of his.”

“Ah-ha. Well then, would you like some dinner as long as you’re here?”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble ma’am. Perhaps we could take it up in our room as, ah, he’s still asleep.”

“That’s fine, dear. I’ll show you the way now then. Let me get the keys first.”

She went behind the counter and dug around in a rather large box,