Caryl Valliere was a lady and a mage who resided in Kukrika, a city in the Principality of Triden. She was not just any mage, though. In fact, she was as good as they came. Widely known to be the best female mage in the city, she was young and beautiful — as attractive as she was talented.
While she might not be a statewide phenomenon, she had acquired celebrity levels of fame within the city. Equally well-known were the preposterous amounts of makeup she applied and her terrible taste in fashion, but these less flattering tidbits had a way of avoiding the ears of the person in question.
Regardless, fame and infamy had convergent effects when it came to bringing people to her door. There was never any shortage of pupils seeking her instruction in magecraft or customers with magely items for her to appraise. At times, she was even asked to craft a trinket or two. The constant supply of patrons meant that she didn’t need to scramble to make ends meet; a leisurely pace of work afforded her a perfectly comfortable living.
She was scrambling now, though, her frantic motions at odds with the carefree lifestyle she was so familiar with. In fact, she was pretty sure she had never worked this hard in her life. Even her surroundings were alien. She wasn’t in her office and home, but a healing hall somewhere in Kukrika, where she labored not in a medicinal ward but an adjoining workshop.
“For the love of… Can someone tell me how things even end up like this?” she griped to the bench and stove around her. They alone adorned the featureless room in which she slaved.
She was making medicine. Brown liquid boiled in the heated cauldron before her, into which she sprinkled some fine shavings. A wooden rod stood abandoned in the cauldron, one end leaning haphazardly against the edge. She grabbed it and used it to stir. Slowly and carefully, she infused the liquid with her mana. As soon as she did, a plume of white smoke erupted from the concoction. She almost choked on the smell.
The entire room reeked, but she resisted the urge to cough. She’d rather not risk getting her spit in the cauldron or blowing away the ingredients on the workbench and having to do everything all over again. The smoke and smell weren’t mistakes; they were part of the process. She had done this many times before. Even so, she couldn’t see herself getting used to it.
Turning away from the cauldron, she stared through tear-stained eyes at her hands, trying to see if she had gotten any of the liquid on them. Once she confirmed that they were clean, she carefully wiped them.
There were, of course, specialized practitioners of medicine-making, but mages proficient at manipulating mana often took it up as a side job. Caryl was one of the latter, who’d sought the skill to make some quick cash. She’d learned how to make medicines with the intention of brewing up a few pick-me-ups or love potions from time to time. Never did she imagine that she’d one day be harnessing every ounce of her pharmaceutical talents, whipping out medicines at full throttle.
“Miss Caryl, isn’t the next batch of medicine done yet?!”
Just as Caryl was about to lose herself in her thoughts, she was yanked back into reality by the loud voice of a young white-robed lady who stormed into the room. The lady’s short hair was tucked into a plain white hat to keep it from getting in the way, revealing a face that showed the signs of extended stress and fatigue. She rushed over to Caryl’s workbench and haphazardly dropped the tray she was holding onto an unoccupied spot, causing the empty bottles it held to totter precariously.
“There’s a patient who’s in critical condition! We need tranquilizers and healing potions! Now!”
“What do you mean critical condition?! Wasn’t it supposed to prevent them from receiving fatal damage?!” exclaimed Caryl incredulously. She kept working as she did, taking the potion she just made and deftly filling each of the empty bottles on her workbench with a certain amount.
To Caryl’s knowledge, mana devices installed in a fixed location had never failed to operate. Unlike magecraft employed on an individual basis, those used in devices was carefully set up and thoroughly tested. Barring physical destruction, such mana devices would always produce the intended effect. The patient in question to which the distressed and uncomfortably loud lady beside her referred had come out of a mana device. That meant the injuries the patient sustained had occurred within the device. The device was designed to prevent lethal damage from being done to anyone within its premises. Clearly, something wasn’t adding up. How could the patient be in critical condition?
“The physical damage, sure. They’ll live — just barely. But that mana device doesn’t protect you from mental damage!”
Caryl kept stirring the liquid in the cauldron as she mulled over the facts. It still didn’t make sense. The job she was currently doing had originally come as a request from the healing house, which had an exclusive partnership with the school that trained adventurers. The school’s training methods erred on the rougher side of things, making it a constant source of injured students. Caryl was no stranger to the system, and she had on various occasions done some part time work for the healing house to help treat the wounded.
This time, however, things were a little different. Normally, they’d see two or three people. Sometimes, a couple more. Currently, the healing house was dealing with over a dozen wounded. That was clearly an abnormally large number. As a result, the healing house ended up understaffed, making everyone involved a little on edge.