The Blood Is the Life

[Hekatos]

The Blood Is the Life

21st of Searing, 125th Year of the Age of Steel

It was entirely possible that Laurevere Val'Istra was rethinking his friendship with Sivan. At least, Sivan worried he might be. They had been equitable neighbors in Kalzasi, and then friends. Sivan had never asked a thing of the man until they were both back in Silfanore. But Sivan didn't ask for himself, and he would petition the King himself on Laurevere's behalf if he thought it necessary.

In any case, he had asked Laurevere to intercede with his sister, who was the Abbess of the Monastery of Saint Velitar. She was an Aimatiké, a group of fabled healers for a race that knew little of disease. They weren't the surgeons who cut into flesh and spliced broken bones; they read narratives in the threads of life, and they were purported to have helped dead Taegan cure the Withering Sickness that had afflicted the First People as if surviving the grind of the Clockwork Empire wasn't trial and tribulation enough.

And then it had been a delicate thing to feel out Filaurel and their friendship, wanting to help him with his affliction without causing any sort of mental or emotional distress...

In any event, after his work at Tavárinoikos was complete for the day, he met Filaurel at Gloaming Hapertas. After a truncated meal, their taxi arrived. It glided through the streets until it came to an appropriate space to lift up and up into higher lanes of traffic, and then through a portal leading to some other part of the realm.

Sivan yawned, his ears popping at the change in elevation. High in the mountains, they were protected from the cooler air by enchanted glass. It was darker here than was possible in the city, though the lights of a smaller town and outlying homes began to light up like fireflies below and around them.

For a few minutes, they were swallowed up in the growing darkness, the flying craft hovering over the abyss from the foothills of the Kókkina range to the pillars of stone that housed various monasteries. And then they were in the courtyard of the monastery of the Aimatiká. The door opened to air thinner and cooler than they were used to, but protected from the worst of the heights by weather-wards.

Sivan slipped out first so he could help Filaurel if necessary.

A pair of young novices stood, statuesque and still, in grey robes, waiting to greet them. He managed a quick bow before turning back toward his friend, wanting to be polite and helpful to everyone, which could sometimes lead to him looking silly.

[Filaurel]

For a sick man from a no-name family, Filaurel had a lot of pride. He'd been well-taught in his youth to stand on his own feet, live by his own works, and not to seek charity if he couldn't repay it later. Even in the throes of his illness he had clung to that pride, willing to visit healers and alchemists but never willing to share his suffering with friends and neighbors. Perhaps it was even that very lack of fortune and health which drove him, for what else did he have left to cling to?

So perhaps there was a time when the tailor would have taken offense to Sivan's tentative offer. Perhaps that time would not even have been so long ago. But for now, that pride was sternly tempered by fear, a primal, pathetic emotion which had been reawakened of late ever since his sudden collapse last Frost. Although the family lore was clear that the curse was without final cure, he found himself thirsting for more- more time, more ability, to claw back just a little of what was his from the invisible hands of his nameless tormentor.

As a result, when Sivan did come to him, Filaurel dithered for only a few days before approaching his friend and asking him to use his connections as he'd offered, if he could. He held out little hope, but a little hope was everything in the world when the alternative was black despair.

Still, he did do his best to stay stoic and unaffected by the taxi's flight. He'd seldom taken them, with his last real tour being the mission Turuther had let him come along on, but it was nevertheless one of the mundane wonders of the realm, and Filaurel didn't suffer himself to be bent out of shape over it.

"I've seldom seen the Sisters." he confided to Sivan as they travelled, "There is little enough need for them in the city, and when I served, the regimental medics never encountered any wounds which were beyond them."

When the taxi touched down outside the monastery, Filaurel waited for Sivan to exit and carefully pushed and pulled himself out. Most of his Kinetics-assisted movement was relatively smooth, natural except to a careful eye for detail, but he had very little experience getting in and out of cabs. It took a minute, but the elf shook his head whenever Sivan made to help him out. One never got any better at something if they didn't practice.

Once he was upright in the air, Filaurel turned--rotated, really, but quite smoothly--to face the novices. Filaurel fully inclined his head, but didn't expend the energy it would take to fold his body; that was an awkward procedure he seldom attempted unless he had some time to work up to it.

"Blessings of the night upon you, Sisters." Filaurel said. Truth be told, he wasn't sure how one was meant to address the novates here, but it was never ill practice to be polite, in his experience.

[Sivan]

A golden brow rose curiously. Filaurel was a private sort, and Sivan respected that; all the same, he enjoyed when his friend shared little details of his past.

The Sisters must have been a healing sect that some associated with the Aimatiká, but he had never heard they were all women. But then, he hadn't been sure they existed until Laurevere assured him they did. Perhaps Filaurel had heard other stories; the former soldier would have seen more of Sol'Valen than Sivan had. He only knew Silfanore and the parts of Aktí he had passed through to get into the realm and to the capital.

"Welcome to the Monastery of Saint Velitar, travelers," the pair intoned. One's voice cracked; a treble soon to deepen. If they had been misgendered, they didn't seem upset. "If you will follow us."

As one, they turned to lead the way in from the courtyard through a pair of fine-paned glass doors, the frame a dark wood that must have been sung into such sinuous, natural lines. Sivan would match Filaurel's pace. He knew the elf wouldn't want to depend upon him or anyone, but wanted him to know that he could and without shame. Of course, there was little Sivan could do to alter how Filaurel saw things.

The interior was surprisingly comfortable and welcoming, though Sivan didn't need his Semblance to know it was ancient. Its bones were, in any event. No doubt some things had been repaired, replaced over the millennia, but this place, he reckoned, had not fallen to the Clockwork Empire, too remote and protected to be found or bothered. He blinked in a bit of awe at the thought, though he reminded himself to remain present.

Even Filaurel could feel an ease—if not of his nerves, then an ease in how he had learned to move his body magically, as if the local aether wanted to move at his will.

Whether or not this place was blessed by the Gods, it was sacred to the Hytori. Velitar had been the founder of the House of the Golden Dragon. Her principality lay under the sea now, and her line was extinct as far as anyone knew. Her work continued, however. It didn't feel like a hospital, but then healing wasn't their only supposed purview. The novices led them down a hall and opened a door.

"Oh, I can wait outside," Sivan said, not walking through. There was a stone bench across from the door, similar in design to those doors that had let them into the monastery.

This door, however, led into a neat, comfortable office of sorts. Inside, an elf whose face was unlined, but whose eyes bespoke centuries of experience. He rose.

"Filaurel Len'Alen, I presume?"

[Filaurel]

It wasn't much of an exaggeration to say that Filaurel sagged with relief as they passed through the door. His means of locomotion were a constant, endless strain. A mental strain, to be sure, but the brain was a real organ and experienced the same stress as any muscle might.

Not being a mage by training, it had never even occured to the tailor that it might be possible to use some kind of external power to ease that burden. At once, he imagined the benefits if he could somehow make it easier to move around his own atelier, to buoy his personal power.

The abbey wasn't a hospital, but Filaurel had been to places which weren't- naturally, he'd sought all manner of spiritualist and faith healer in his first years of the curse. The memories of those days were a whirlwind now, barely coherent. He could recall some of the visits quite sharply, while others were lost amid the torrent of days and weeks and months spent subjected to the gazes and crystals and hands of well-meaning, useless doctors.

Still, he didn't think he'd managed to find his way to any quite as impressively antique as this one. There was something... comforting about that? Filaurel did not consider himself a superstitious man (that was an understandable quality of the younger races, but not something to be proud of as a Hytori) but he couldn't shake a certain sense of childlike awe at his surroundings.

He followed the acolytes as best he could. As Sivan expected, he had no wish to lean upon his friend's shoulder--Sivan had done enough for him already, by his reckoning--but thankfully he made it through the building with as much grace as one might expect. He nodded to Sivan as the other elf took his leave, and entered the office.

"I am." Filaurel responded. He did not attempt to bow, for that was hard enough when the social niceties demanded it. "I am come seeking some manner of aid, for my condition has begun to degenerate further. It has been said that some in my family lived with it for many decades, but I fear it will not wait for me."

[Hekatos]

The Blood Is the Life

When the door closed, Sivan was left in the hall and while the room wasn't entirely silent, they were undisturbed from without. It was clean and comfortable, welcoming in a way one might associate with a mind-healer, not antiseptic as a soldier might think of medical triage.

There was magic afoot, but then, this was Sol'Valen. Nothing robbed him of his agency, but even more so than outside, his Kinetics felt easier, more elegant, as if the aether here were keen to bend to his will, anticipating his desires. Perhaps it was. The Aimatiká were all but legend, and it was rumored that they remembered the first lessons that had come with Raella's gift, the one that had been subverted into blood parasitism.

Perhaps there were some echoes of fear that they were vampires, but it was said they aided Taegan Sol'Eilran in ending the Withering Sickness. They must have done it from here, this remote retreat.

The healer bowed and gestured to a seat.

"Please, make yourself comfortable. I am Brother Nestandur. If you have any questions before we begin or at any time while you are here, please do not hesitate to ask. Otherwise, if you could tell me what you know of your condition, I can listen while I semble your aetheric body."

[Filaurel]

Questions? Well, yes, Filaurel had questions- but they could wait. For now, he wanted to do nothing that might distract the healer in his diagnosis. Perhaps that was selfish of him, even rude. It was difficult for the tailor to care.

"Thank you. I will tell you the symptoms, how it began, and what I know of its history." Filaurel said. He was no doctor, but he tried to imagine the things which were important to him, as a professional- not the client's whole history, but some of it. Not everything they wanted to know, but everything relevant to his work.

"It began thirteen years ago, when I was yet a soldier. It was on patrol, as I recall- a beautiful, clear night, beneath the stars. I was walking across a glen to relieve my comrade of his watch, when I suddenly found myself falling to the ground, utterly unable to move. In the space between one second and the next, all control over every part of my body was wrested away."

Filaurel kept his voice steady even as the agonizing memory of it swept over him, but his eyes were dark, gloomy. It was not a moment he liked to think of.

"My captain took me to see healers, of course, even the city's chief doctor gave me an examination, but none could discern the cause of my sudden paralysis. Over time, by dint of guided meditation in the temple gardens, I regained basic motor functions above the neck; but that was as far as it went. Eventually, I was granted leave to obtain a Cardinal Rune of Kinetics, to help restore my independence to some degree."

The tailor fell silent for a moment, then cleared his throat, and finished his tale.

"In my family, the ailment is known as the Curse of Len'Alen, and it was once a common complaint, but I am the only sufferer in my generation. The genealogy says that it is a progressive, incurable disease which will eventually overwhelm any magic used to treat it, locking the sufferer inside their own body until death takes them. For ten years, I have used the Rune to circumvent the condition, but now it, too, has begun to falter. I fear that my time grows short."

[Hekatos]

The Blood Is the Life

Brother Nestandur proved an attentive, active listener. No doubt he was sembling on some level, but he gave Filaurel his full attention all the same. It were better to hear the narrative, listening with objectivity as well as compassion, and then sense for himself more fully what might be sensed.

He noted sudden onset, asked supplemental questions about possible warnings that might have been missed, as well as more probing questions regarding the failings of his runic solution.

Then began his examination. It was most likely boring for Filaurel, or nerve-wracking, or both. The healer set various crystals and artefacts at key points around the tailor's seat. There was a mathematical precision to it, as well as a surety in placement. But then all he did was semble Filaurel, occasionally adjusting positions or placements, swapping out what looked to be a fist-sized hunk of raw quartz with a disc of polished stone that seemed black until it began to give off a ruddy light from deep within as he began to use it.

Minutes crept on into hours, and it was only when Kinetics began to fail and Filaurel began to sag in his seat that the healer ceased. His own shoulders were slumped from the efforts of arcane concentration and analysis. He sat back with a sigh that seemed more for weariness than bad news, but Filaurel didn't know Nestandur well enough to be sure.

As he opened his mouth to speak, there was a knock at the door, polite and precise.

"Someone should have taken your friend somewhere else to wait," he said as he rose to his feet to answer the door. But while Sivan was standing outside the door, so was a pale woman in a black peplos with a red cord belt. Filaurel's friend looked in with concern, but he had clearly risen to greet her. "Abbess, did you find the records?"

"I did. Please, allow me a private conference with the patient."

There was a brief pause, but he acquiesced quickly, and stepped out. The woman walked in and the door shut behind her. She seemed to bring a new flush of energy into the room's aether, and she began to pick up Brother Nestandur's various implements to put away as she made her brief introduction.

"Master Len'Alen, I am Haera Val'Istra, abbess of Saint Velitar's. As you may know, our order safeguards Hytori history in addition to our work as healers. Of particular interest to us are bloodlines. In doing his due diligence, Brother Nestandur checked our archives for records on your family. He found that what records do exist are not available, even to him. He requested my permission and I have reviewed the materials."

She paused, then sat in the chair Nestandur had vacated and looked him in the eyes.

"He is excellent at his work. Between him and what I have uncovered, we can offer you some help, but only the slenderest threads of hope. What aid we can give you, we will give you freely. With you as a new and willing patient, we might even suss out new treatments to give you more of yourself back and maintain what you have for even more time. We might even help prevent its recurrence in your children and their children. It is, in fact, a curse, however. While not derived from the Rune of Affliction, a curse all the same. There are reasons why your family's documents are kept secret..."

She paused again. "If you wish to know, I will share that with you, but I think you will not be happier for the knowing."

[Filaurel]

If the Abbess expected surprise or consternation from Filaurel, she was to be disappointed. He listened carefully to her words, with a serious air, and nodded at the end as she carefully explained the nature of the affliction.

"I suspect you are right." the tailor conceded, his dark eyes growing cloudy as he retreated into memory, "Your words are not entirely a surprise to me, honorable Val'Istra. My own family's records are poorly-kept and bland, but it is quite obvious that all matters concerning the Curse were intentionally purged by my ancestors. The few mentions that remain refer to it as the family's shame, a mark of some sin which they had forgotten."

It was a strange thing, really. It had bothered Filaurel, once- the people of Sol'Valen put a lot of stock in their history, national and familial alike. Naturally, the Sol and Val components of the nation tended to monopolize the great and mythic glories of history, but every family had their own lore, their own roll of heroes and valorous deeds. The lowliest families tended to be those most invested in preserving and celebrating their own history, in fact.

But Len'Alen did not. Oh, there was the family roll, Filaurel knew the names of uncles and great-aunts who had earned some fine honor or performed some coveted office in the lands near Aerion... but it was shallow. His family did not celebrate itself, not in the way his neighbors had, and he had always gotten the feeling that his older relatives thought it would be somehow inappropriate to celebrate.

(Perhaps this was what had filled him with such particularly nationalistic fervor, as a youth. If he could not be proud of his family, he had all the more attention to lavish on his country.)

"I am not especially interested in that history." Filaurel said, bluntly, "But I am not yet ready to die, and I would prefer not to go in the way my ancestors did, trapped in a prison of their own flesh. So I would ask that you tell me whatever may help me change that fate."

[Hekatos]

The Blood Is the Life

Given Filaurel's condition, he might have misread the compassion in her gaze as pity. Haera Val'Istra was pitiless, but not without empathy.

His response was carefully worded; so was hers.

"From what I understand, the Val'Alenessë stood against a member of the family who brought shame upon them in the Age of Wonders. Their action was not dishonorable; quite the opposite. The repercussions, however, were an insidious curse that took generations to come to fruition. That fruition came to our knowledge when a Len'Alenin warrior came to us for aid, having mysteriously lost the use of her legs.

"She ultimately succumbed to the curse, but it did not fall again upon her children or her children's children. This is why I say that we ought to be able to prevent any issue of yours from carrying it. However, we can only offer you therapies and treatments, as I said. I shan't raise false hopes in speaking of a cure, though we will work toward one with all due diligence.

"I can't promise you a cure in our lifetimes, but our work may one day save others of the lines that trace back to those who stood against injustice. Or someone will find the one who laid the curse that they might lift it."

Stranger things had happened, but it was perhaps better he didn't ask for the full truth that his ancestors had chose to forget. He had the motive to seek out the root of this curse, but perhaps not the means.

[Filaurel]

The Abbess' words might have fallen upon his ears with crushing weight, once; now, the disappointment was so dull it was practically background noise. He had told Sivan that he had no expectation of finding a cure here, and that was the fruit of years of failure. Doctor, alchemist, magician, priest- none of them had a miracle for him.

Still, he wasn't yet ready to give up on the struggle.

"You will have my gratitude for any help you can offer." the tailor responded, "Though my gratitude is a trifling thing. With the matter of my own issue you need not be concerned, for I have no children and I think am unlikely to sire any in this life. Still, I have family, and would not like to see their children suffer the curse."

If his name were Val', Filaurel would have been only too happy to offer some great donation to the order in exchange for their help, but Len'Alen was not a family of means. He'd made enough from his little boutique atelier to survive in Silfanore, but unless his plans with Sivan bore out beyond his wildest expectations he would never be a wealthy man. Of course, he knew the order had charitable intentions, but it rubbed his pride wrong anyway.

...but not so much that he would turn down aid, not given the alternative. So he bowed his head (which was about the extent of his ability to kowtow, in any event) and tried to keep as much composure as he could muster.

"Even if there is no cure, ultimately, I will cherish whatever life I can lead. That much, I have promised to the Dragon gods."