Arcanist In Another World-Chapter 64: You Did Good
Valens sat, wedged into the little space under the stairs of the basement with his legs sprawled out in front of him, a searing echo of an agony burning still in his chest, fingers of his right hand trembling like an addict dumped by his dealer and left all alone with no means against a long night ahead.
You’re not supposed to use every single drop in that tiny well in your chest, I forgot. That’s when the pain starts, and you start shaking.
It was coming back to him in drops of shimmering blue, dripping from the very ceiling of his flesh, but not with enough haste to satiate the searing sensation about his limbs. The Hexsurge proved a mighty spell that could allow him to see through a man’s soul, but as it appeared, it demanded more mana than an Inferno to manage.
There is some sense in that. One is for the burning, and one is for different things.
At least the job was done, and there in the basement rested more than a dozen men suffering from the nightmares of their episodes. Some had their toes missing, some others had their legs chopped off, and others were staring out into the empty walls, thinking darkly about what a Miner could do without his arms.
Not much, I’d say. You can carry a legless man into the mine, and with enough stats, have him hack at the walls from a little down near the ground. You couldn’t, however, expect an armless man to learn how to handle a pickaxe with his toes. Or could you?
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A trickle of sweat ran down his back at the thought as slowly, painfully his exhausted source saw new life being dripped into it. He remembered the times when he had to use every drop of his mana in the Necromancer’s Rift but never did once he experienced something more than mild pain. This time, though, the amount of Hexsurges he had to deploy to cleanse that invisible sickness left him nearly breathless.
Perhaps it’s the nature of the treatment. It’s likely that dealing in souls is a touch different than dealing in flesh.
A bed creaked loudly as one of its legs gave out, cracking under the weight of a toeless man and sending him sprawling onto the ground. He huffed and groaned as he rolled like a ball toward the side wall, bounced back painfully with arms flailing, fingers searching for anything to latch on. In the end, two of the more healthy-looking Miners had to haul him off to his feet while the young Priest, Simeon, watched with the look of a shocked rabbit.
Experience. Once you get more of it you start seeing the world in a different light. Become more ready for things not to go your way. Useful stuff, indeed, that experience. Good thing you have a master by your side.
Father Harmon observed stately the little ruckus caused by the broken bed, gestured at the pair of Miners carrying the unfortunate man to take him to one of the sturdier beds, walked over to him and checked his body as he had done so dozens of times on others after Valens was done with the work.
Valens didn’t blame the man for trying to make sure the plague was gone as he hadn’t been able to give him a clear explanation of the treatment he’d used to fix these people. ‘I’ve cleansed their souls’ seemed too much on the nose, and felt it would’ve been more appropriate for God’s men’s line of work than a stray Healer. ‘I plucked some dark streaks off their bodies,’ on the other hand, was just as bad, but it at least gave some indication of the work he’d done without sounding like too bullshit of an excuse.
It certainly didn’t improve the reputation of us Healers, though. I’m afraid I made it worse. They’re looking at me like I’m a freak.
That was the only thing that hadn’t changed since he came here, and there was something soothing about it. That, and a few allies he’d made from the Miners’ group who heard most of the word from one particularly gruffy, annoying old man who finally reunited with his pipe.
Eh, I fixed his cancer as well. That should give him a few more years with that baby of his. Hack, they call it here. I daresay that’s a name better fit for a pair of smoked lungs.
Valens didn’t know what those few years would look like for Harlow, but he couldn’t find it in him to think the man would go on a holiday to enjoy old age. When he saw how that Richards guy rubbed his hands at the news that his mine was now free of any dark things, it had occurred to him that Brackley needed not for shadows to make life a living hell for these people.
There’s not much I can do other than provide a momentary relief to these people. This place has its own laws.
He wasn’t in a position to defy those laws, even if he wouldn’t mind changing a few of them if given a chance. It was complicated work managing masses. A hard job that would more often than not leave some folk all naked out in the open.
The similarities are there, and I don’t have any idea what to make of them.
Valens winced to his feet, checked his arms and legs to see if they would sting. They didn’t, so he walked over to Harlow, and clapped a hand over one of his shoulders. Watched as the old man gave him a tight-lipped smile. Other Miners stumbled closer when they saw Valens was back in their midst.
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I feel like a clown.
At least he wasn’t treated like one by the looks on those faces.
“Blessed Father,” one of them said through the gap of his teeth, sounding much pleased to have one of his hands rescued before the sickness took off all his fingers. “Reckoned myself that Healers were supposed to be plotting little thieves. Never heard one that’s actually good for anything. Ain’t that the truth, eh, Harlow? Where did you fetch this one?”
“He came to me in a bloody night,” Harlow said gravely, his expression darkening. “A deed of the shadows in that mine, I’ve reckoned at first. Thought the Tainted Father himself finally had enough o’ me.”
“You did?” The gap-toothed man stooped slightly and looked up at Valens as if he was trying to fit the picture of Harlow’s words to that of Valens’s face. “Well this one’s not looking like a shadow to me.”
“Course not, you fool!” Harlow smacked the man on the right cheek, making him stumble a tiny step back. He then let out one smooth, uninterrupted laugh as he raised his hand to his face. It looked like he was trying to compensate for the lack of his toes by using his hands in more efficient ways. Slapping someone off, for one, seemed one of the better uses to Valens’s thinking. “He’s fixed us all up and tight, has he not?”
“Aye,” the man said, one hand over his cheek.
“Ripped the Hack out o’ us, did he not?” Harlow continued, and this time, he addressed the whole crowd. The men turned toward him and sneaked a few glances from Valens as if in doubt, but in the end, they all nodded under Harlow’s insistent stare.
“Aye,” they said.
“What o’ the Priests, then?” Harlow said and jerked a thumb back at the Priest pair standing a touch far from the crowd but just enough to hear their conversation. “What did they do? They prayed, and waved a hand or two at us. Tried to chop my legs off, saying that’d give me a few more days. God’s men, eh? What use we have of ‘em when a single Healer can do the work of a dozen of ‘em?”
The Miners shifted uncomfortably at Harlow’s words, looking between him and the Priests as if not sure who they should believe in.
“I’d say nothing. They do no good against the company, and they proved a bunch of feckless fools in the face of a sickness,” Harlow said, slowly turning to the pair of Priests. “Tell ‘em, Father. Tell ‘em the work you did during these last couple o’ weeks. Men are eager to hear your word.”
Simeon flinched like a terrified pup with its tail tucked between its hind legs, while Father Harmon’s wrinkles deepened with a grimace. He had his shining pate and a smooth cassock against a crowd of filthy men, and some lifemana in his hands that was only good for small wounds.
“Some matters are beyond our means,” Father Harmon’s voice sounded strained as he went on. “Some matters demand more than they seem to an unknowing eye. We have tried everything we can, but—”
“But the heretic got the better o’ you, eh?” Harlow scoffed at him. “You’re full of horseshit, Father. And not the good kind that has its uses.”
Some Miners gasped. Some others looked horrified as they stared agape at Harlow’s face. Father Harmon, on the other hand, was scowling at Valens, who stood there by the Miners’ crowd, taken completely aback by this sudden development. He expected a few pats on his back, and perhaps an occasional ‘thanks’ from a passing Miner, but not… this.
“No shame in admitting your shortcomings, Father,” Harlow said just then, which shushed the crowd right away. “But at least give the man his due. Don’t go staring at him like he’s some dweller hiding under a man’s skin. Don’t just stand there and do nothing. We all owe our lives to this stubborn fool.” He turned to the Miners with a fist clenched tight. “Do we not?”
“Aye!” the Miners roared this time with such unity that the whole basement shook under their voices. It wasn’t long before every one of them made forward, some stumbling, some carried off from the armpits, coming at Valens from all around. Coming at him like a cloud of moths that found a giant fire to be about.
They patted him on the back. Calloused hands held him tight by the arms, dragged him closer with crushing force so that the other Miners who couldn’t get off their beds could pay their dues to him. They laughed. They cried. Some others even went as far as to spit at the Priests, while making sure they shaded their curses, reminding one another that they were still in God’s house.
“You did good,” Harlow’s voice was the loudest of them all as the men made way for him when he stumbled on, hooked his muscled arm around Valens’s neck and slapped him on the chest. “You did good…” he said over and over again.
Why?
Valens couldn’t wrap his head around it. They weren’t supposed to be celebrating. They weren’t supposed to be thanking him. He might’ve saved them from death, but that sickness left its mark on them. Most of the men here wouldn’t be able to work for the rest of their lives, and even those who could would do it by risking pain at each step.
The sickness tore through them like a plague, and left them battered and bruised. And yet still the men were roaring with laughter, choking up in tears, leaning against each other and saying that they were still alive, still breathing.
This… seems familiar.
Valens blinked as he was passed around by heavy, grateful hands like the only torch burning inside a deep, dark tunnel, mind reeling as he tried to take it in.
It took him a heavy moment to understand it. To feel the gratitude of the men around him. To breathe in the very air of joy that suddenly spilled from each of these rugged Miners. A heavy moment, indeed, to remember that he hadn’t been relying on Apathy through the hours of work and after it. He’d been himself when he fixed Harlow, and the other Miners. He was now himself without an invisible web protecting his mind from everything.
He could feel the joy. The roaring, insidious joy that filled into his heart. Made his arms and legs tingle. Nearly took the ground away from underneath his feet, and removed all the weight off his shoulders.
“Still alive!” the Miners cried. “Still breathing!” they roared.
Valens looked at them, then back at Harlow, who was smiling a big, wide smile at him. “Look,” he said, waving a hand toward the crowd. “I’d call that a debt paid, eh? But that’s not the end of it. Tonight we drink. We drink till we piss the shit out o’ ourselves, alright, Healer?”
“Oh…” Valens swallowed. There was a heavy pressure behind his eyes. “Right,” he managed to say in the end. “We drink tonight.”
“Good!” Harlow slapped him again, but this time, Valens found himself smiling at the force of it.
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