Chapter 6:

Chapter 6: Healing

Echoes of Fallen Gods


The village looked exactly like any other she had ever visited.

Dina walked slowly along the dirt road leading to the outskirts of the small hamlet. The two-track path she followed became more well-kept the closer she got to the settlement, and by the time she entered the village proper, it had morphed into a gravel-covered street, lined with simple, unpainted sheds, weathered by sun, wind, and rain.

The air smelled of mud, animal feces, and sweat. This was a place of peasants and farmers, toiling in the nutrient-rich soils of the Agerian River Plains. Wheat, rye, flax, and rapeseed were the crops of choice here, supplemented with a healthy amount of livestock. Life was simple, with no promise of riches or greatness. They tended their fields and barns, sacrificed to the gods, married, raised children, and buried their dead—though not always in that order.

She had been doing this for seven years now, ever since she turned twenty. Walking from village to village, providing her services wherever she went, was not a quick way to get rich, but it provided her with a steady income and gave her the opportunity to meet new people and see new places. And out here in the rural areas of the Empire, she was needed. The farmers couldn’t leave their crops and their animals unattended and go to the larger cities whenever they got sick. Here, walking between the small communities across the Wheat Belt of the Agerian Empire, she could help those who truly needed her.

She set up her booth along the low fieldstone wall that separated the village square from the main street. The wall itself, when draped with a rough piece of cloth she carried on her travels, made a decent table, and a nearby smaller rock would have to serve as a stool. She would only be here for a day, or at most two, before continuing on to the next village down the valley, and carrying around heavy furniture would have made her mobile lifestyle impossible. To Dina, simple was the word of the game.

Lining up her potions and tools on the cloth, she knew the villagers walking by would be curious and stop to see what she was offering. Once she had told them of her services, word would spread, and sooner rather than later, a small queue would form in front of her, filled with peasants eager to get relief from their various ailments.

But today would probably be a little bit different from the usual, Dina thought dryly. She hazarded a guess that most everyone she treated would also want to talk about the unusual events in the sky this morning. Usually, they chatted about their children or husbands, their pigs or their horses, and about where the best mead in the valley could be found. Or better yet, what ailments their relatives in the next village over were suffering from.

But today, all she’d get to hear would be the same story about the omen from the gods, over and over again. She sighed, but not really out of frustration. These were simple people. She understood them, and respected them. This was their way of life.

Patera, god of healing, help me do well today, she prayed, as she prepared herself for the day ahead.

Thinking a bit more about the celestial event of the early morning, she concluded it had probably not been an omen at all. Patera had neither given her advance warning of the rude awakening she had been in for, nor had her patron god discussed the incident afterward. Since Patera hadn’t deigned to talk about it, it probably wasn’t important. She knew there existed strange things out there in the dark void beyond Taeron, and it wasn’t unreasonable to think that once in a while, one of those things might fall to the ground, all on its own. There was no reason to assume the gods had to have been involved, though they had obviously known about it beforehand.

A shadow in front of her intruded on her thoughts. Dina looked up from her improvised table to see a middle-aged man standing there. He looked like a thousand other peasants she had met over the years—short, sunburned, and dirty—and slightly nervous. They were always slightly nervous, her patients.

“Hello, sir,” she greeted him, smiling to put him at ease. “I’m Dina Nauretian, Dark Flame of Patera. What can I help you with?”

The farmer squirmed a little, huffed, and then rolled up his left sleeve. The skin there was red and a little bit puffy. She grabbed his arm with her soft hands and turned it around, making sure the morning sunlight illuminated it properly as she examined him. The rash was limited to only a small patch. It was irritating, for sure, but hardly dangerous. It could be a reaction to a toxic plant he had accidentally brushed up against, or possibly the result of an insect bite.

“I have the sacrifice,” the man said, holding up a beautiful rose with his other hand. “It’s just a rash. Surely, this is enough?” he asked, hope evident in his voice. If she were to reject it, he would be disappointed.

But in the back of Dina’s mind, Patera approved. The life of the rose, despite already ebbing away now that it had been cut, would indeed be enough to cover something as trivial as a rash.

She looked down at the potions on her table again, her eyes wandering among the various bottles and jars sitting there. One of them caught her interest, and she picked it up, but immediately put it down again. It wasn’t right for this type of skin irritation.

Finally, she opened a small jar, filled with a turquoise cream the consistency of butter. It gave off a smell that was sharp but not entirely unpleasant. With her index finger, she scraped up a small glob of the ointment and prepared to smear it over the man’s rash.

“This can be treated with a simple balm,” she explained to the man. “There’s no need for a sacrifice. You do need to pay first, though.”

“Of course,” the man replied, relieved he’d only have to give up his money. He dropped the necessary coins in the bronze bowl Dina had placed at the front of her cloth-covered stone wall. The sound of metal clinking against metal was always welcome.

“It’ll take up to a day before the irritation goes away,” she explained as she covered the red skin with the salve. “The balm can sting a little, but it’s nothing dangerous.”

Happy to have been able to help the farmer, she considered her payment. She knew Patera wouldn’t like that Dina had refused the sacrifice, but there was little the god could do about it. It was good business, after all. In Dina’s experience, those she could treat without needing an offering tended to be more generous when they paid her, often giving her a bigger tip on top of her asking price. Not only would they get to keep what they had been prepared to sacrifice, but more importantly, they wouldn’t have to deal with the risks inherent in a healing.

Patera might be a little bit upset, but at least Dina had gotten paid.

Next in line was an older woman, supporting herself on a crude crutch made from a thick oak branch, polished over the years into something that now acted as a second leg for her. The woman only had one foot. Her right leg ended in a stump, covered in dirty rags, hanging a hand’s breadth above the ground.

Behind her, with a leash around its neck, a small pink piglet was digging through the dirt with its snout, making carefree little grunting noises in the process. Idly, Dina began to assess whether the life of the swine would be enough to cover regrowing the woman’s foot. Given that the little animal seemed to be well treated—perhaps even loved—by its owner, she guessed it would.

She was just about to greet the cripple, when a man in a red-and-white uniform suddenly stepped forward to the top of the queue, pushing the old lady to the side.

“Good morning, ma’am,” the local guard captain hailed her. The village wasn’t large enough to have a full Imperial garrison, but the Lion Emperor didn’t like leaving his holdings entirely unguarded. Still, in a place as small as this, the presence of a handful of soldiers, and their captain, was enough to keep order.

“Good morning, sir,” she greeted him in return. It stung a little to see him pushing past the peasants waiting for their turn, but such was life. Those in power would always have the advantage, and there was nothing she or anyone else could do about it.

“What can I do for you?” she asked pleasantly, doing her best to cover her unease with the situation.

The guard captain looked around, making sure none of the other customers were close enough to hear him.

“I have an ulcer,” he explained, lowering his voice. “At times, it hurts like the abyss. Can you help with that, ma’am? What will it cost me?”

Dina thought for a bit, considering his ailment, his potential wealth, and the man’s level of desperation.

“Forty talons. I can heal you for forty talons. And Patera will require a suitable sacrifice.”

“Of course,” the soldier replied. “Glory be to the gods.”

Thankful for her promise of relief from the pain he was suffering from, he happily dropped a heavy bag of coins into her bowl. That took care of the payment, but there was still the matter of the sacrifice.

He looked around at the peasants surrounding him. The elderly woman’s piglet, still happily browsing through the dirt, caught his eye.

“You there,” he commanded the woman. “In the name of the Lion, the Empire’s army hereby requisitions your swine.”

She looked at the guard captain with fear in her eyes, but there was nothing she could do. Bruskly, the soldier took the leash from her frail hands and dragged the squealing piglet to Dina.

“Here,” he said to her, trusting the cord into her hands. “Here’s my offering to Patera.”

At first sick from the man’s brutish treatment of the old lady, Dina quickly changed her opinion when Patera’s voice slithered into the back of her head, giddy with bloodlust.

Give me the pig”, the god of healing whispered, her voice forcing itself into Dina’s mind. “Give me its pain.

What her patron god wanted was her law. Dina was her Dark Flame, and Patera’s hand in the world of man. Aligning herself with her god’s will was her entire reason for being. Such was the nature of their covenant, the dark contract she had signed with the god of healing and torture. In exchange for the power to heal or destroy, she had sold her soul.

With the offering accepted, Dina began to pray. Silent words escaped from her lips as she prepared to take the life of the pig and transfer it into the guard captain’s body. She saw nothing when it happened. There were no streaks of light dancing in the air between the poor animal and the expectant man, and no glow around him when he was healed. But the sound of the piglet shrieking in terror as life slowly ebbed out from its small body was all she needed to know that the healing was working.

When Dina opened her eyes again, the dry husk of the young animal lay still on the ground, like a piece of trash someone had thrown away without a second thought. In front of her, the guard captain beamed with gratitude. The pain he had suffered from for so long was finally gone.

* * *

The day continued much like it had started. Villagers came and went. Some she treated with balms or alchemic brews. Others, she healed with Patera’s dark magic. Most of them received the healing they requested, though some did not. If things went the way they usually did, she knew there would be a second batch of customers later that night, looking for her at the inn where she planned to stay. There were always customers with ailments too embarrassing to have treated in the middle of the town square.

Dina didn’t mind. It was all part of the job. As long as the pay was good and the proper sacrifices were made, she would continue to do her god’s work, no matter where that took her.

In the early afternoon, a middle-aged woman brought her son in front of Dina. From the look of their clothes, the family was poor, and she felt sorry for the small boy when she saw his left hand was severely deformed.

“Rollar had an accident in the mill,” his mother explained. “He can no longer move his fingers. I do not want him to live as a cripple for the rest of his life.”

“Of course,” Dina replied. “I will do what I can to help him. Do you have the offering?”

The mother nodded and prodded her son to hand over the animal they had brought with them to Dina. But the boy refused, holding it tightly, unwilling to let it go.

“You have to, sweetie,” the woman said, begging her son to comply with the request. “You know there’s no other way.”

Dina could see the boy’s shoulders sinking as he resigned himself to reality. His mother was right. There was no other way. If they wanted Patera’s help, a life had to be taken. That was the covenant between her and the god of healing, and there was simply no way around it.

Of course, they could take their chances and go to the nearest Flow Walker, but even the strongest and most experienced of the Deepwell users would find it difficult to fully heal such a grave injury. For Dina, on the other hand, the magnitude of the trauma was inconsequential. Restoring a crushed limb was as effortless as removing a pimple. Once the offering was made, the dark magic Patera had granted her would be powerful enough to do the rest.

In the end, the little boy relinquished the animal he had been cradling against his chest—a small, white rabbit, obviously his beloved pet.

Feeling pity for the poor boy, Dina immediately began to pray for him. But in the back of her mind, she could feel Patera’s disapproval of her breach of contract.

She sighed.

“And the payment?” Dina asked the boy’s mother. “For such a grave injury, I will require fif… teen talons,” she said, cutting herself off mid-sentence.

The woman hesitated. Dina grew weary, already knowing what the mother would say. Her son would not get healed today.

“I’m sorry, Dark Flame,” she replied, slightly struggling with the words. “I don’t have that much money. We hoped the offering would be enough. He loves that animal so much. Can’t it be enough for Patera?”

It was. Her god had no need for money. But the covenant she had entered with the god of healing and torture was ironclad. For every healing, Patera would get her measure of pain, and Dina would get the appropriate coins. If those conditions weren’t satisfied, there could be no healing. Patera would not allow it, and defying a god was simply not possible.

“I’m afraid it’s not…” she started to say to the woman, who by now had realized her son would still have to spend his life as a cripple, when her words were suddenly interrupted by the terrified squeals of the rabbit, still held tightly against the boy’s chest.

The healing magic had begun.

Before her eyes, the little rabbit shriveled as its muscles atrophied. Its skin stretched tight, pulling its lips back into a death grin as it dried over the fragile bones of its body. The animal screamed in agony, its beautiful black eyes turning gray and hollow while Patera took her final grip on the sweet little creature.

Looking at the boy, Dina expected to see his hand move in response to the healing powers so spectacularly wielded by her god. But the boy was just as crippled as he had been before.

Without the payment, Patera had still accepted the offering.

But she had provided no healing in return.



Author's Note

Thank you for reading Echoes of Fallen Gods!

This novel is 43 chapters long, with new installments posted twice each week. Perhaps you’d be interested in reading some of my other stories while you wait for the next update?

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