Rise of the Living Forge

A knock on the tavern door pulled Anna from her thoughts and lifted her gaze from her palms. She’d only heard the sound because of how closely she was seated to the door. Even with the ever-present aura of darkness that muted both sound and light alike, the tavern was bustling with conversation and the clink of cutlery.

It was early afternoon, and a horde of adventurers had descended on the tavern like a swarm of locusts. Today might have been one of the busiest ones in recent memory. Anna hadn’t seen so much as a glance of Lillia since the rush had started, and Reya was working with Madiv to queue people up at the door.

That made it all the odder for someone to be knocking on the door. It was clearly open, but as if in spite of that thought, another knock rang out.

Anna rose to her feet and walked over to pull it open. Then she glanced down. Standing before her was a young girl, somewhere around eleven or twelve years of age. She cradled a hand, which had been wrapped heavily with stained bandages.

The girl wasn’t alone. About five or six other people had gathered in a line behind her, and even without looking closer, Anna could smell the lingering grasp of sickness on them.

This wasn’t the adventurer line. That one ran off to the left, wrapping around the Devil’s Den before continuing off into the street. These people weren’t here for food.

“The thin man said we could come over here and skip the line since we aren’t trying to eat at the tavern,” the girl said, peering up at Anna with wide, brown eyes. Her skin was pallid and her features were sunken, but there was a strong air of propriety that seemed to have been imbued into her very being that wouldn’t allow her to act impolitely in the presence others. “Is that okay?”

“I suppose that would depend on what you want,” Anna said with what she hoped to be a comforting smile. Rodrick had always been a bit better at dealing with kids than she had.

The girl picked at the bandages on her hand and shifted her weight from foot to foot uncomfortably. A man behind her — burly and with the smell of a tanner lingering in his clothes — spoke first. “I heard there was a smith that could fix ruined limbs here.”

“Have you gone to see any healers?” Anna asked gently. “The smith isn’t in the tavern right now, and his services are rather expensive. There are cheaper ways to get a wound fixed.”

“Already tried that,” the man said gruffly. He took his girl’s hands and gently uncrossed them before pinching the end of the bandages and unraveling them.

Anna’s throat tightened. She smelt the injury before she saw it.

Rot.

There was something eating away at the girl from within.

Healing magic was one of the most restrictive forms of all magic. It possessed immense strength but was bound by ironclad rules that could be boiled down to one simple idea — if the body couldn’t fix it normally with enough time, then it couldn’t get fixed at all. The limits of that rule could be stretched with sufficient power.

She could extract poisons and knit shut nigh-mortal wounds, but rot was not a wound. It was a corruption that spread through the body, eating it alive from within.

The girl finished unwrapping the bandages. Anna’s suspicions were confirmed immediately. There was a long cut along the girl’s palm. The skin around it was bright red and the cut was sickly, full of pus.

It was little wonder that the healers hadn’t been able to do anything about it. Minor rot would often leave on its own, but there was nothing that healing magic could do about it.

The best solution was to stop it before it could start. But if that couldn’t be done, the most efficient way to remove it was to remove the worst chunk of flesh and then try to heal the missing flesh rather than fighting the rot itself.

But when it gets this bad… the rot might have already spread through her body. Carving the girl up wouldn’t do anything other than weaken her even further. This was left to sit for far too long.

“How bad is it?” the girl asked. Her eyes were squeezed shut. “I don’t want to look.”

“It…” Anna caught herself before she answered that question honestly. “Well, it looks painful. You better wrap this back up.”

“The smith. When will he be back?” the man asked, a note of desperation entering his voice. “We’ve tried everything else. I’ve got some gold. If he can fix this—”

“He makes new limbs,” Anna said gently. “This isn’t something he could fix.”

“What? Why not?” the man demanded.

“How long has this wound been on the girl’s hand?”

The man hesitated for a moment as he dug through his memories. “A few days.”

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And it’s gotten this bad that quickly?

Anna brushed the girl’s hair back, then gently put her hands over her ears so the girl couldn’t hear what she said next.

“The rot has likely spread through her body. She was cut by something covered in filth. Even if Ifrit was to remove her entire arm and replace it with a new one, there’s no guarantee that would be enough. How did it get this bad?”

“She cut herself on a blade while she was trying to help me in the tannery,” the man said, his features going nearly as pale as the girl’s. “Are you a healer as well? Are you saying there’s nothing that can be done? I told you, I can get gold! Just tell me how much and I swear we can get it!”

“I am, but it’s not a matter of gold. If she’d come a few days ago right when the wound had started, this would have been relatively easy to fix. Painful, but easy.” Anna released the girl’s ears and took a step back. Arwin couldn’t fix this wound — but there was a chance that she could.

Her healing magic wasn’t any different from what other healers would have been able to pull of when poisons weren’t involved, but there was one more option.

The title she’d gotten from helping to defeat the Ashleaf Tree. It was called [Sacred Purifier] and allowed her to, at an immense expense of magical energy, cleanse it. She hadn’t been in an unfortunate enough situation to try to use it before today, but she highly doubted there was much else that could be done about the rot.

Well, I could probably try to make a poison that directly attacked it, but I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything fast enough. Not something that wouldn’t kill the kid in the process — and if I did that, she’d definitely lose her arm at a minimum. It’s too late for roundabout treatments at this stage.

“I — what about the smith?” the man asked desperately. “He hasn’t taken a look yet. If he could fix a missing limb, I’m sure—”

“He can’t. Not yet, at least,” Anna said with a firm shake of her head. She wasn’t actually sure if that was true. Arwin was capable of a lot of things. There was a chance he could make an item that would draw the rot out of the girl, but she had no clue when he’d return from the dungeon. If the man left with his daughter now, there was a very good chance she wouldn’t be alive when they next came to find Arwin. “But I might be able to do something.”

“You can?” the tanner clasped onto her words like a drowning man a piece of driftwood. “Please. I don’t care what the cost is. I won’t let things get this bad next time. I swear I’ll pay more attention. I just thought it was a cut. I didn’t—”

“Let me focus,” Anna said in a firm tone. She crouched beside the girl and took her hand. “I’m going to need you to sit down, okay? I’m going to try to help you.”

The girl nodded. She crossed her legs and sat down on the street before Anna.

“Okay.”

“Good,” Anna said. “I’m going to try to kill the rot in you. It might be a little painful.”

“It’s going to hurt?” A flicker of fear passed through the girl’s eyes.

Anna winced. That definitely hadn’t been the right way to approach this. She wished Rodrick was here. He could have kept the kid distracted the whole time she worked.

Fortunately, the girl’s jaw set and she swallowed before plastering a confident expression over her tired features. “Okay. I’ll be fine. I can do it.”

“You definitely can,” Anna said as she took the girl’s injured hand in her own. She didn’t risk saying anything else. It was already stressful enough working with everyone staring her down, but she’d worked in high pressure situations before.

Her eyes focused on the wound. Magic bubbled up within Anna and poured through her arms.

Nobody but her and the rot mattered. The rest of the world wasn’t there.

She drove the healing magic out from her palms and into the girl’s hand.

[Sacred Purifier] activated.

Magic evaporated from her reserves at an alarming rate. What felt like an ocean of power was transformed into little more than a desperate trickle. Thin strands of white light coiled out from her palms and wormed their way into the wound.

The girl stiffened. She let out a whimper of pain as the magic burned into her. Then she went quiet, determination burning in her eyes and her jaw clenched so tightly that Anna feared she was going to have to repair a few teeth after the arm.

Anna sent her magic deeper into the girl, probing through the wound. She didn’t let herself think about how little power she had to work with. Distraction would only waste energy.

She couldn’t see what was happening in the kid’s body, but she could feel it through the strands of white power.

And it was working. The rot was collapsing before her.

Awe fought to squeeze its way into the forefront of Anna’s mind. She’d read the Title, but actually feeling it work was entirely different. This was breaking a fundamental rule of magic—

No. It wasn’t breaking the rule at all.

Realization drove into Anna’s heart like a blade and she nearly lost her concentration. Only years of practice kept her focused. The Rot was burning away as her magic consumed the sickness and leaving nothing behind.

Healing rot was impossible — but that was because there was nothing to heal. She was killing the rot. The title was targeting it and consuming the damaged flesh rather than trying to fix it.

And then it was done. Exhaustion slammed into Anna and nearly knocked her out on the spot. She’d drained herself far more than she’d thought.

The girl swayed, and her father steadied her.

Anna looked down at the wound. The skin around the cut was tender, but the sickness was gone. It had worked.

“Did it work?” the tanner asked in a mixture of anticipation and fear. “It looks like it worked! All that’s left is a normal cut!”

“I believe so, but you’ll have to keep the cut clean until it fully recovers,” Anna said, pushing herself upright with a grimace. The line leading into the tavern had shrunk considerably. She blinked, then realized her knees were aching. She’d been kneeling for a lot longer than just a minute or two. “I don’t have energy to fully fix it. Any healer should be able to take care of the rest, though.”

“She cured rot,” one of the men in the line behind the girl and her father said, cradling what looked to be a broken arm. His eyes went wide in disbelief. “Did you see that? She cured fucking rot!”

No, that’s impossible. I killed the Rot. Big difference.

It was a bit too late to say anything about that, not that anyone would have appreciated its significance.

Loud clamors exploded through the crowd, quickly drawing the attention of the adventurers that had been waiting in line to get into the Devil’s Den.

Well, I suppose I did tell Arwin I would get some more attention by offering healing services. At least not everyone is going to come asking specifically for the magic healing smith when they’ve got a normal cut…

But I think I might have just made a whole lot of work for myself.

But, as Anna looked at the girl’s peaceful face, devoid of the pallid tone that had haunted it, she knew that she couldn’t have made any other choice.

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