Path of Dragons

Book 2: Chapter 17: Miracles

The acrid stench Elijah associated with the Voxx filled his nostrils, reminding him of past battles. The smell of human misery reminded him that something else was at play, though. So, after only a few moments of hesitation, he pushed forward, his bare feet sounding loud against the cold tiles.

“Sir? Can I help you?” came a high-pitched voice. Elijah turned to see a pretty woman with dark skin. If he’d had to guess, he would have said that she was in her mid-twenties, but long, stressful hours had robbed her of some of her vitality. “You really shouldn’t be in here, especially dressed like that.”

Elijah looked down at his attire. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” he asked.

The woman wore purple scrubs that had been mended in a few spots and a pair of comfortable-looking sneakers. “You’re barefoot. In a hospital. Surely you can’t think that’s appropriate.”

“Oh. Right. I keep forgetting about that,” Elijah said, suddenly self-conscious. Unfortunately, his bare feet were a necessity. One with Nature required him to be in contact with the ground, and while being indoors didn’t seem to deactivate it, for some reason, wearing shoes – or any kind of foot coverings – did. It was a quirk of the system, and one he’d yet to find a way around. So, for now, he needed to remain barefoot, though he hoped to one day find a means of subverting the augmentation’s requirements.

Though he supposed he should count himself lucky that it didn’t deactivate when he leaped into the air or stepped foot on man-made surfaces. Otherwise, the seesawing of his effective attributes would’ve driven him insane.

“Occupational hazard, I’m afraid,” he said. “Anyway, I’m Elijah.”

She frowned at him, then said, “Jess. What are you doing here?”

He ran his hand through his hair. “I’m a Healer.”

“And you’ve seen all sorts of Healers, have you?”

“Well, no. But none of them I know walk around barefoot. Or looking like they stepped out of a Renaissance Faire.”

“Ouch. My outfit’s not that bad. The dwarven lady who made it was very skilled.”

“Dwarven?”

“Never mind that.” Letting his staff fall against his chest, he slapped his hands together and said, “Alright. I’m full of Ethera and ready to heal. Where can I set up? Now, I feel obligated to inform you that my spells – well, one of them at least – can get a bit messy, so it’s probably best if I set up somewhere with a drain in the floor. Like a locker room. Or maybe outside. I don’t know. This is your turf, so I’ll let you decide.”

“What are you talking about? How can a healing spell be messy?” she narrowed her big, brown eyes and crossed her arms. “Wait. Are you messing with me? Did Sam send you here? This is a serious place with seriously ill people. If you –”

Elijah gripped his staff and said, “Woah. I really am a Healer. You people really are the suspicious sort. Makes a guy feel a little unwelcome, if I’m honest.”

“Prove it.”

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Elijah rolled his eyes. “So little trust,” he muttered. “You could just get one of those Guards outside to identify me.”

“Or you could heal someone.” She looked back at the room full of patients, then pointed at one. “That one. He’s already been healed, but there’s still a little bit of the plague left in him.”

“Why didn’t you heal it all?” Elijah asked.

“Ethera. I’m running on fumes here,” she said. “Same as the other four Healers. If it wasn’t for us, the plague would’ve already killed everyone in town. But even with everything we’ve done, there’s a limit to our Ethera, and…well…we can’t get to everyone in time. Not even close.”

Elijah could hear the frustration in her voice, and what’s more, he understood it. He’d felt something similar when the panther had died. Despite all the power they’d been given – and it was miraculous what healing could do – there were still limits.

“Do you care if I get the room wet?” Elijah asked.

“Why would the room get wet?”

“It’s part of my spell. Well, one of my spells.”

“Is it real water?”

“As opposed to fake water?”

She shrugged. “Some of our Mages can conjure ice,” she said. “But it disappears after a few minutes. Same with rocks. We learned that the hard way when someone tried to build a wall out of conjured earth.”

Elijah cocked his head to the side, then rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. “You know what? I’ve never even bothered to pay attention to whether or not the water sticks around,” he said, a little ashamed that he hadn’t tested that facet of Healing Rain. But in his defense, the climate of the island was that of a temperate rainforest, so it was almost always wet, raining, or both. And when he’d used the spell in the tower, he’d either been underwater, or he’d had other things on his mind. “Best assume it’s real, I guess.”

She let out a tired sigh, then said, “Fine. Follow me.”

Without another word, she turned around and strode away. Elijah followed, hurrying to catch up. With Essence of the Wolf active, he had no issues keeping pace as they crossed the room. Soon enough, she led him into another hallway, and he asked, “Where’re we headed? Someplace special? I’ve been –”

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Elijah’s words died in his mouth the moment they passed into another room. The stench of the corruption was so strong that he very nearly gagged the moment he stepped over the threshold. But even then, the smell was nothing compared to the sight of three figures, each one looking as if they were rotting alive as they lay on soiled hospital beds.

“What the…”

“These are the worst,” she said. “We’ve been trying our best to keep them alive, but…no matter what we do, the plague just keeps coming back. If you want to prove you’re a healer, then here’s where you should start, because if you can’t do anything for them, they’re probably going to die within the next hour. When they get this bad, we just make them comfortable because…because it would take too much Ethera to heal them. If we even can.”

“Jesus,” Elijah muttered, studying the unfortunate trio. Two of them were men, and the last was a woman. However, there was nothing to suggest that they were in any way connected. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the thick black tendrils spreading across their mostly naked skin, they would’ve looked mostly normal. The only saving grace was that they were at least unconscious.

But Elijah’s every sense told him that they were anything but ordinary.

Not only did the smell of the Voxxian corruption – and Elijah was certain that’s what it was – hang thick in the air, but he could also feel it sliding across his skin like he’d been dunked into a box of squirming maggots. The sour, acidic taste tickling his tongue was even worse, though. In short, being in that room – which was only about fifteen feet across – was one of the most unpleasant things Elijah had ever endured.

And he’d been digested in the stomach of a monstrous orca, so that was saying something.

“Go nuts,” Jess said, gesturing to the nest of corruption.

Elijah shook his head, swallowed hard, then stepped forward. Without further hesitation, he ensured that Aura of Renewal was active so that he could be at peak Regeneration, then cast Healing Rain.

Storm clouds gathered, wreathing the ceiling in dark fog. Then, the first drop of rain fell. Then another. Soon after, a deluge of water poured forth from the clouds, and each drop that hit one of the patients did so with a sizzle.

Elijah stepped through the rain, then laid his hand on the first patient. She was older – maybe forty or so – and her body had clearly been ravaged by her illness. In a lot of ways, it reminded him of his time being treated for cancer. Back then, he’d had to sit in his oncologist’s office as they pumped him full of dangerous chemicals. But he hadn’t done so alone. There were always one or two other people in there undergoing the same dubious treatment, and Elijah had watched as those familiar faces succumbed to the horrors of chemotherapy. The woman laid out beneath him was little different, with sunken cheeks, pallid skin, and loose flesh that suggested rapid weight loss.

And then there were the black tendrils of corruption.

It all made Elijah sick. But instead of vomiting like he wanted to, he swallowed his discomfort and laid his hand on the woman’s forearm. It was cold and clammy to the touch.

She almost felt like she’d already surrendered to death, but the shallow rise and fall of her chest told him differently.

For a second, he just let himself feel her moist skin. Then, he drew Ethera from his core and funneled it into Touch of Nature. The healing power of the spell raced out of him and into the woman. The effect was immediate.

She gasped, her eyes shooting open as her hand shot out. Elijah could have dodged – the woman couldn’t move very quickly, after all – but he let her wrap her fingers around his forearm. Her eyes locked onto his, and she croaked, “Kill…me…”

Elijah ignored her. He could practically feel her pain, it was so palpable.

Since the very beginning, Elijah had been using Touch of Nature to cure himself of various diseases. At first, the spell had been used to eradicate various parasites he’d picked up from drinking tainted water, but he’d used it to similar effect dozens of times throughout his time on the island. So, if he knew nothing else about how the spell interacted with a patient, he knew precisely how it went about counteracting disease.

For specific injuries, he had to guide the spell, but with disease – especially one that suffused the entire patient’s body – it was more akin to flooding the recipient with ephemeral vitality and forcing the body’s natural recovery into overdrive.

Which was precisely what happened.

The first cast didn’t really do much. But under the effects of Healing Rain, combined with a second cast of Touch of Nature, he sent the black tendrils into a retreat. The next cast pushed them back further. And the fourth banished them altogether. Elijah was fairly sure that the woman was cured – though she was still disoriented – but he cast Touch of Nature a final time before he pulled away.

He glanced back at Jess, who stood on the other side of the doorway, her mouth agape, and he said, “I think that takes care of her. You might want to get her somewhere else so it doesn’t reoccur.”

“What did you do?” she asked.

“Healed her,” he stated. “Why? Can’t you do the same thing?”

“Not like that.”

“Oh. Well, call me special, then. I’ll take care of these others, then we can move to the big room. Unless you don’t want me making it rain in there, in which case we probably need to set up some sort of –”

“Wait – you still have Ethera?”

“Sure,” Elijah said, checking the state of his core. He could still cast Touch of nature a dozen more times before he ran dry, but his Regeneration was high enough – especially with Aura of Renewal augmenting it – that it wouldn’t take that long to recover.

Not for the first time, he wished that Touch of Nature was a little more potent. But then, he supposed that it would probably cost more Ethera, so it would almost assuredly even out.

“I can keep going for a while,” he said. “And the rain is persistent, so it’ll keep coming down for…I don’t know… another hour, maybe? After that, I’ll have to cast it again, but by then, I should have plenty of Ethera recovered.”

“But…but how do you have…if I did what you just did, I’d be out for the rest of the day…”

Elijah shrugged again, then gave her a grin before saying, “Like I said – I’m special, I guess. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to save a couple of lives.” He winked at her. “Because that’s what heroes do.”

She snorted in laughter. “That…was terrible.”

“Really? It sounded cool in my head.”

“Did it?”

“No. Not really. But in my defense, I’ve only really had gnomes and a tree to talk to for a while, so my conversational skills are a little out of practice. Oh, and a goblin. A few dwarves, too, but they’re not great conversationalists.”

“You might be the oddest man I’ve ever met,” Jess said as she positioned herself behind the healed woman’s gurney. It was the sort that one would find in hospitals, so it was equipped with wheels. “And I know actual wizards.”

Elijah shrugged, then knelt beside the second patient. “If you’re going to be anything, be the best version of that you can be. That’s what my dad used to tell me. So, I’ll take that as the compliment it was obviously meant to be.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that he probably wasn’t talking about being weird,” she said, pushing the woman toward the door.

Elijah cast Touch of Nature on his latest patient, then glanced at Jess and said, “Maybe not, but I’ve decided to embrace it anyway. Besides, who wants to be normal, right? Odd is so much better. Sexier, too, I’m told.”

She stopped. “Did you just hit on me? Here?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. That all depends on your reaction. If it’s disgust, then of course I wasn’t coming onto you. I’m offended that you would even suggest such a thing. But if you’re even mildly interested, then I’m one-hundred percent flirting. Or trying to. Like I said, I’m a bit out of practice.”

She just shook her head and continued to wheel the woman away.

Elijah glanced at the comatose man he intended to heal and said, “That went well, right? I think it went well.”

Then, he laid his hand on the man’s arm and cast Touch of Nature.