“Hello, doctor,” said the girl. She was laid out in a bed, wearing a nightdress, with her long, black hair draped over her shoulders. Her face was pale and her cheeks a bit hollow looking.
“Hi, Lily. How are you feeling?” Glim swept aside the girl’s bangs and felt her forehead.
“Well, not bad,” Lily replied with a feeble smile. Food, drinks, and many changes of clothes were available all around the bed; she likely found it difficult to move very far. Looking at Shannon, she asked, “Excuse me, but...who are you?”
“Oh, me? I’m Shannon, a traveling mage.”
“A mage?!” Lily cried, sounding weak but happy. She looked up at Shannon with desperate, hopeful eyes, but it seemed like her body wouldn’t move the way she wanted it to.
“Yes, Lily,” Glim said. “She’s going to help me cure your illness. I’m sure that things will be all right now that she’s here. Don’t worry.” He squeezed her hand.
“Thank you, doctor... I’m looking forward to it.”
Glim tucked Lily in again and led Shannon out of the room. To Shannon’s eye, Lily really, really hadn’t looked well. She seemed to be pretending to be fine to try to keep Glim from worrying.
Once they were outside the room, Glim turned to Shannon with a grave look on his face and explained, “Her name is Lily Clavel. She’s my patient.”
“Lily, huh? She’s a cute kid.” It was the truth: Lily had a fragile cuteness to her. It stood out, given that she seemed liable to fade away at any moment. Shannon didn’t have that—the beauty of someone who was dying.
“Until a few years ago, she was an innocent and incredibly healthy little girl. But for the last few years, a disease has kept her cooped up in that room.” Glim cast his sorrowful eyes downward.
“Judging by the way she looked, I assume it’s saluena?”
Glim’s head snapped up. “Y-You recognized it?! It’s such a rare disease nowadays!”
“Sort of, yeah. I haven’t been on such a long journey for no reason, you know.” The corners of her mouth stretched up into a grin. “Anyway, I’ve even seen a few people with it recently. They all died, though.”
“Recently, huh... I didn’t know that there were other people still fighting this disease.”
Saluena was an incurable disease that was rare in this age. It slowly robbed the body of its vitality and, eventually, its movement. In the end, without fail, the victim stopped breathing and fell into their final slumber. The only saving grace was that saluena didn’t bring about suffering like coughing, vomiting, or diarrhea—but of course, the lack of symptoms made it hard to identify in its early stages. It was a terrifying disease.
Shannon wasn’t sure how far Lily’s illness had progressed, but judging by her inability to leave her bed, the disease had advanced considerably. Saluena also acted faster the younger its victim was. She probably only had about one month left.
“You knowing about saluena makes matters easier. Follow me,” Glim said.
He led her into the basement, which turned out to be where his laboratory was. It was a dimly lit room filled with all sorts of things, like chemicals, herbs, the fangs and hides of animals, and blood. Shannon saw evidence that Glim had performed lots of experiments in his laboratory, trying over and over again to develop his medicine.
Glim opened the cabinet in the back and pulled out a single vial. “This is the experimental drug in its current stage. At the moment, its side effects are too strong. I haven’t been able to test it on people yet. I’ve been doing a lot of experiments on animals, but they’ve all failed. The animals always die before I can verify the results.” He sighed. “And then there’s the unicorn horn. I thought it might be helpful in curing the illness, but...”
Understanding dawned on Shannon. “I see. That’s why you had to borrow the money.”
Glim nodded despondently. “A single gram costs fifty thousand gal. The price is exorbitant because unicorns are so rare. I took all my assets plus the money I borrowed and managed to procure a hundred grams, but...well, the results are as you can see. It seems I lack the ability to make it work. I’m afraid that at this rate, that girl’s life will end before I can finish developing the cure.”
“Unicorns are strange and don’t show themselves often,” Shannon pointed out. “I’ve seen them only a few times myself.”
“I see. Well, since you’re a mage, I’d like to make use of your pharmaceutical knowledge. I hear that many mages are well-versed in medicine.” He gave her a searching look. “You seem young, but...”
You don’t need to worry, Shannon thought. I’m a mage who’s been around for thousands of years.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Despite how I look, I’m pretty good with medicine.”
“Oh, thank you. Somehow I feel like I can trust you, and desperate times call for desperate measures.” Glim bowed his head. “Please help me!”
“Of course. But I will need to be paid. I don’t have any money at all right now.”
“If we can make the medicine, I don’t care what happens next. I’ll make sure you’re paid. And if you don’t have anywhere to stay, you can use the second floor here. This house is too large for just Lily and me.”
“Wait, free of charge?!” Shannon blurted. Glim was treating Lily in a two-floor house with a basement that stood outside of Eldoa, on a small knoll a little ways to the east. Lily was quarantined in a corner room on the first floor, and Glim’s room was to the immediate left of the entryway. Shannon wondered if the second floor was just being used for storage.
“Well, yes. It’s a bit messy up there, though.”
Shannon’s eyes lit up. Glim was a lifesaver! She’d thought she would have to save money while paying for hotels, but if she could live for free where she worked, she’d have a lot of money left over. “All right, you’ve got yourself a deal! I look forward to working with you, Mr. Glim.”
“Same to you, Shannon.”
Just like that, Shannon began working under Glim to help him make the cure.
Saluena was a peculiar disease. The symptoms were internal, almost like an error inside the victim’s body, and it spread through bodily fluids, meaning it was contagious. Because of that, Lily had to be confined to the treatment room in Glim’s home.
“It doesn’t matter how good the medicine is—when I add powdered unicorn horn, it instantly becomes trash. It’s utterly useless.” To demonstrate, Glim deposited some powdered unicorn horn into the half-mixed potion in front of him, and the liquid turned a sinister purple.
“Whoa,” Shannon said. “It even looks bad for you.”
“It does,” Glim agreed. “No matter how I compound the mixture, it always turns out like this. I’ve already sacrificed almost fifty mice. I’m at the end of my rope here. I want to research other methods of doing this, but using unicorn horn is rather unprecedented.” He grimaced, vexed.
“Well, do you know what unicorn horn is used for?”
“Used for? Well, not especially... By chance, I got one by gamb—I mean, I received it, so I tried compounding a small amount of the powder, and the test mouse’s condition improved instantly. I went crazy searching for more and ordered it. Honestly, I didn’t have time to look into its original use.”
“Gambling, huh?”
“I-I was invited along! A-Anyway, that’s not the point.”
“Jeez, so that’s why you don’t have any money.” She’d assumed he’d run out of money and then had to borrow some in order to save Lily, but it seemed he was useless from the start in that regard. “Well, back to the main issue. Unicorn horns are actually used to make mages’ wands, and also furnishings and tableware for nobles to look at.” The more high-ranking a noble was, the more likely you were to find unicorn horn in their house. Even these days, you could find lots of houses like that.
“So it’s for the amusement of the wealthy?” Glim asked. “Even I knew that much. What surprised me was that it could be useful in medicine.” He folded his arms and nodded, as if he was proud of his accomplishment in discovering that.
“Exactly. Anyway, on top of unicorns being few in number and the powder having to be manufactured, only the rich can afford to buy unicorn horn. Because of that, it’s not very well-known that unicorn horns actually contain poison.”
Glim’s face twitched. “Poison?! Wait, now that you say it...” He paused, thinking. “Poison, huh? I didn’t realize that. It’s such a high-end item that I didn’t even consider that possibility.”
“Yeah. Unicorn horn is so expensive that no one would think to make it into medicine. Very few people are aware that it’s toxic. But by itself, it’s not a very strong poison, so it rarely causes symptoms. I think it’s likely you’ve been compounding it into a stronger poison.”
“I see...” Glim was scribbling down notes. He had already composed a list of herbs and compounding techniques that might neutralize the toxin. It occurred to Shannon that Glim might actually have been kind of brilliant. “All right, thank you! My knowledge was too limited, but thanks to you, this might work. I’d been thinking so much about the cure that my brain wasn’t working anymore.”
“No need to thank me, but the hard work starts now. Not even I have any idea what’ll happen with the stuff you make from now on.”
“You’re right. Please continue helping me as my assistant. We’ll go buy some ingredients right away!”
With that, he and Shannon headed out to buy various herbs that might compound with the unicorn horn in a way that made it safe to consume.