#writeblr vilalge

[tc-doherty]

Writetober Day 8: Match

Other shorts with Seraltem:

[7]

@did-i-do-this-write

High Priestess Aarlis was an old woman. How old, no one was precisely sure and, if you asked her she would only answer, "old enough to have seen pretty much everything". Prince Seraltem had never before seen her flustered by anything, and that remained the case even after he brought her the boy he had fished out of the pond, the one who had seemingly appeared there out of nowhere.

"Of course," she said, "all water is connected so it is possible to travel great distances with it."

"He didn't seem very prepared," said Seraltem.

"Then there are three options. The gods did it, or someone did it to get rid of him, or he accidentally became the focus of someone else's spell. We are in the days leading up to a great conjunction of the planets, magic always goes a little wild on days like this if you don't prepare for it. But how he got here isn't really the important thing."

"Is it not?"

They had laid the boy down on one of the patient tables. Now, with quick and practiced movements, Aarlis pulled the shirt over his head and rolled him onto his stomach. "Link your magic with mine and you'll see."

And so he did, and recoiled immediately.

There was…something…lined up with the boy's spine. Something slimy looking and slithery and with too many legs.

"What is that?"

"A curse, and a nasty one," Aarlis said. "It's obvious he's been the recipient of many treatments, but all of those could only fix symptoms. No one removed the curse itself, which will kill him sooner rather than later." She shook her head. "People have forgotten all kinds of things these days. So it appears to me that it could be the work of the gods, bringing this young man to where he needs to be. You'll have to help me, of course. "

"I don't know how much help I can be, you know I have very little magic."

"That is precisely what's needed. Our mysterious patient is only a few steps away from the underworld, the curse must be removed. But if I simply remove it without giving him any support, it could kill him just as easily. The problem is, he's clearly been ill for such a long time that his body can't handle strong magic. You're both boys of a similar age, so your vital energy will be more similar to his than mine, certainly. And not nearly as overwhelming. So, you'll need to support him while I take the curse off or else there's no point in doing it at all."

That made sense. Then again, the things that High Priestess Aarlis said almost always made sense.

From her classes, he knew a lot of the non-magical things that were required for removing curses and started setting up the room without complaint. She nodded approvingly as he did so, and spent her time setting up the magical things that were required.

"But that doesn't look like any curse I've ever seen," Prince Seraltem said when he was done, "nothing like the ones you've described anyway."

"This is a bloodline curse," she said, "they are difficult to cast and not very common. Not usually worth it. It's carried in the blood and becomes active in any member of the family that meets certain criteria. The purpose is to kill the host slowly over time, but as generations pass it will get stronger and the people afflicted will lead shorter and shorter lives until there's no one left at all. Pointless if you ask me. All that suffering and the person who cast it is probably dust by now." She sighed. "They're equally difficult to remove because they're entangled with the bloodline itself."

"Can you do it?"

He shouldn't have asked.

Aarlis clucked her tongue. "Of course I can, who do you think I am? But you should make sure you're ready, because this is going to take a while."

"I'm ready," Prince Seraltem said. He had set up a stool next to the table which he sat on now. He took the boys hand in his. This sort of support was tricky to do. It wasn't straightforward healing. It was more like filtering, taking the damaged energy from the patient and replacing it with healthy energy from the donor. That caused the healing itself to be slower, but more stable, and was more useful for illnesses. Because it was an exchange, he knew, the donor and the patient had to match as much as possible. Seraltem had never done it, although he knew about it in theory. Still, he did know how to do it, and it was definitely the easier part of what was about to happen.

Aarlis waited until he was settled, nodded once, and got straight to work.