Reborn Healer Chapter 43

Thanks to the librarian’s rather lacking explanation, I hadn’t been entirely sure what to expect when it had come to using a memory capsule.

It was less clear than one of the Nightmare-related visions would be.

Not visions, I corrected myself. What had Aria called it again? Soul wandering? Something like that.

This was similar. Just like the last time I’d wandered out of my body, I was able to walk and move around.

Interesting. My assumption had been that a memory capsule would trap me in someone else’s memory. If that was the case, then I would have naturally assumed that I wouldn’t be able to move. Instead, I was able to step backwards and see that I had just been standing in the space of a nondescript silhouette of a human being.

Someone else was approaching said silhouette, and he appeared to be entirely normal.

I guessed that the silhouette was the person whose memory I was accessing. Briefly trying to interact with my surroundings revealed that unlike in my soul wanders, I simply passed through everything. That tracked logically. This was a memory, not a real-time vision, so of course I wouldn’t be able to change or communicate anything.

The scene I was observing, as far as I could tell, was that of some kind of secretive meeting in what I presumed was a Whitefall facility.

I had to pick up a lot from context, since there was no convenient guide to tell me what everything was. The words were written in a different enough style from the text in Liaren that I had to strain a little to read everything properly. It was the same language, fortunately, but maybe a different dialect of it?

Or maybe it was just an artifact of whatever spell had been invoked to create this. The further I got from the silhouette, the blurrier and more abstract the world got. Everything outside of its line of sight was similarly blurred.

The man who my silhouetted reference was likely there to meet gestured towards a seat, and both sat. He was dressed richly, even moreso than most of the people I saw in the Northside. I was faintly reminded of paintings of old European monarchs I’d seen in museums back on Earth what with the rich red coat and all the buttons. At least there was no powdered wig, though his long, straight, and blindingly silver hair was otherworldly enough that I could see why he didn’t use one.

“Patriarch Anaris,” the silhouette said. I shivered at the sensation. In the memory, whenever he spoke, my head and throat vibrated as if I was the one saying the words. “A pleasure as always, my lord.”

“Please,” replied the honeyed voice of the red-coated man. “You are with friends. It’s Anaris to you.”

“Of course, Anaris,” the silhouette said politely. “To what do I owe the pleasure? It’s not often that you call me to the Whitefall mansion.”

Okay, I was putting the pieces together here. Patriarch was a title used by certain landed nobility in Leyeril. There was a use to all that boring shit Iryn had gone over!

The librarian had also mentioned that these memory capsules had come out of Leyeril, so that added up. Put those together, and I could assume that the Whitefall family was a noble family of some but not massive influence in Leyeril, and Neferi had been one of them.

That didn’t really bring me any closer to understanding why she was connected to my system, but any information was good information.

“Just for words of advice,” Anaris told silhouette-guy. “Though you work with us most closely, it is my understanding that you deliver to other families as well, correct?”

“Yes.” The silhouette reached into the blankness of his own body, withdrawing a packet that looked to contain some kind of crystallized powder. “I brought some for you today.”

Anaris took the packet, smiling broadly. His satisfaction was painted clear on his face, but hints of craving and gluttony threaded out from him.

I frowned inasmuch as a magical representation of myself inside someone else’s memory could. Did silhouette-guy have a skill that resembled mine, or was Nightmare’s Call working within the context of this memory? If it was the latter, then there was a lot of potential value to be gained out of this.

The conversation continued, unheeding of my frantic thoughts.

“…would be best to avoid the Bluewings and their district,” Anaris was saying. “For the next few days, at the very least.”

“May I ask why?” silhouette-guy asked. “I have deliveries across the entire capital scheduled for this week, and then I have to go to the other side of Leyeril to obtain more supply. My buyers expect me promptly.”

“Allow me to candidly speak with you, Jesper,” Anaris said, stashing the satchel in a pocket before leaning in, chin in his hands. “An era of change is coming. Great darkness is coming, but with that is a great light. Are you familiar with the irregularities of the new generation? Those of the last, oh… fifteen, twenty years?”

“Somewhat,” silhouette-guy—Jesper, rather—replied. “Prodigies and the like.”

“Indeed. My family is fortunate enough to have been blessed with one of them. She reached Adept by the age of nine, did you know? She’s very close to Master now.”

My surprise mirrored Jesper’s. I had been told that my rate of progress was unprecedentedly fast, and here was someone casually outpacing me by more than a year.

They didn’t call someone like this a prodigy for no reason, I supposed.

That said, I wondered how many years it had been since she’d hit Adept. If she was that talented and was still at Adept at—what had he said, somewhere between fifteen and twenty? The gap between Adept and Master was huge.

“That’s incredible,” Jesper said.

“Indeed. She developed a talent for certain kinds of magic thought lost, and some of them are potent enough that it has even affected what my research is on.”

“Is that so? That’s interesting indeed.”

“And if you remember my field…” Anaris let the silence trail on.

“Ah. I’ll let the Bluewing family know that their shipment will be delayed, then.”

“Please do.”

They stood up, and the area blurred even further, details melting into each other until they resembled the mess I’d seen inside the memory capsule earlier more than anything like the concrete surroundings we’d had earlier.

An uncomfortable sensation yanked at my belly, and suddenly I was falling and falling.

I woke up roughly, consciousness returning to my body just in time for me to vomit the memory liquid out, purging it from wherever it had gone. I completely missed the capsule, but the mana was still active in the liquid. Just like the capsule had indicated earlier, the liquid hung in the air after I expelled it.

“This can’t be sanitary,” I muttered, twisting the capsule back open and gathering the suspended liquid back inside. Once I screwed it shut, a glimmer of light passed over the capsule fully resealing it.

Well. If it had any problems after passing through me, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Hopefully someone better than me could handle it.

The information I’d picked up from this first one had been scarce but useful. Cross-referencing it with what I already knew told me that everything at least somewhat lined up. I’d been hearing about how the situation in the south was steadily worsening to the extent that some people down Southside were saving up to try to make the journey to other cities in the Halcyon kingdom that they were sure would be safer when all hell supposedly would spring loose.

I hadn’t heard that about the generation of mages rising up in accordance with that, though. I wondered if that had something to do with why I’d suddenly found myself in another world twelve years and some months ago. Was I part of that new generation? If it had something to do with the world bringing balance back as Anaris had said, that would make some degree of sense.

That could also be the connection for why Neferi had been mentioned on my system. Maybe she was the prodigy the Whitefall patriarch had mentioned. If that was the case… was there something there?

But surely Neferi wasn’t the only talented new-generation mage or warrior who’d died in twelve and a half years, right?

I doubted I was going to be able to conclusively determine that myself. Fortunately, there were still three other capsules to go through.

The second one looked like it had some more impurities in it. Though it retained the smooth, iridescent coloring of the first capsule, there were a number of inky black bubbles floating around it that didn’t seem like they were supposed to be there.

Well, my Danger Sense wasn’t screaming at me, so I figured it was probably fine to take.

Now that I was familiar with how to experience a memory, the motion was much easier. Once again, my consciousness forcibly shot away from my body.

The second memory was from a high vantage point atop a paneled rooftop. I assumed that it had come from the same “courier” as the first.

In this memory, I got to see a city other than Liaren for the first time. Assuming this was the capital of Leyeril, I had the pleasure of overseeing Entrum. It was a lot hillier than Liaren, which mostly lacked notable geographical features other than its river, and it generally looked nicer all around. Even though this memory had the same blurring issue as the other when it came to parts of the world the viewer wasn’t focused on, I could conclude that the worst parts of this city were comparable to Northside in Liaren.

I wasn’t here to gawk, though, and I traced where Jesper the courier’s silhouette was probably looking towards.

Maybe half a mile from his vantage point, a mansion large enough I might have called it a castle spanned multiple city blocks. Jesper’s memory had him up high enough that I could see over its walls from here into an expansive courtyard full of people milling about and chatting. A party of some kind, it seemed, or maybe just normal noble behavior.

The crest in front of the manse read Bluewing.

I assumed the courier had received more detailed timing about what was going to happen. There wouldn’t have been much reason for him to be up on this roof, presumably actively recording his memory otherwise.

Sure enough, not long after I figured out where he was looking, I saw something shift. A dark spot emerging from the ground.

Around me, other dark spots formed, and I realized after Jesper’s complete lack of reaction that this wasn’t what I was looking for. This must have been the impurities I’d sensed. Parts of the memory were damaged.

As I settled in to look again, my Danger Sense flared.

It was unmistakable this time. This was absolutely my own skill triggering in my mind while I was within the memory, not any vestigial sensation from him.

Half a second later, shadow erupted from the ground inside the courtyard, spreading out low and quick across the ground.

“Shit,” Jesper said, taking an involuntary step back. “Seven hells, that…”

The silhouette stopped, activating a spell of some kind. My view of the pavilion sharpened considerably, the rest of the memory-world fading away.

Inside, the first wave of shadow was starting to fade away, but most people seemed to have been hit by it, and the oily darkness was clinging to them and jumping from person to person. Everyone who’d been hit was visibly in pain, darkness spiderwebbing across their bodies.

I wasn’t sure if it was just my imagination, but I thought I could hear them screaming from here.

Jesper’s attention turned, and so did mine.

I’d been mistaken when I’d thought the shadow had stopped. Judging from Jesper’s shocked gasp, he might have thought the same thing.

It was leaking out the front gates of the Bluewing mansion, spreading into the streets and hitting people beyond.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Jesper muttered. The mansion blurred, more dark spots taking over the memory as he turned from his position on the rooftop and sprinted away.

Unlike last time, this memory ended with the blurring shifting to darkness, more of the decay that had entered it earlier overtaking the world around me before it disappeared entirely.

Vomiting this fluid up actually hurt. While the memory fluid itself was painless, the impurities in it dragged on their way out. I wanted sorely to purify the fluid before I put it away, but I assumed that if they hadn’t already purified it, there was no way I was going to do it with my skillset.

I packaged it up and immediately got on the third memory. This one seemed to have less content than the others judging by the amount of the colored liquid inside, and it also had significantly more impurities, enough that the bubbles were forming outright midnight-black lines.

I entered anyway. I needed this to be comprehensive.

The silhouette looked the same. Jesper started this memory in front of a nondescript side door, rapping on it in a carefully measured pattern, three-pause-one-pause-four.

It cracked open not long after. A surprisingly young voice answered.

“Is this the courier?”

“It is, my lady,” Jesper said. “Do I have the pleasure of addressing the lady Neferi Whitehall?”

My heart stopped (metaphorically, of course. I had no idea whether time was even passing in the outside world or not). There it was. The name I’d been searching for all this time.

“Yes. It is.”

She didn’t show her face. Instead, all Jesper did was toss another one of the satchels I’d seen him holding into the small crack in the door. I could walk through it easily enough, but there was nothing but darkness on the other side. Since Danger Sense and Nightmare’s Call worked in the dream, I had hoped that my Harmonic Awareness would give me some idea as to what was on the other side, but no dice.

I did, however, get a taste of her emotions. Stress, fear, and above all else, a crushing sense of guilt.

“Rest well, my lady,” Jesper said, a note of sympathy in his voice. “If you find yourself in need of my services again, you know where to find me.”

“W-wait!” Neferi called out desperately. “Courier! Can I ask you a couple more questions?”

The courier had already turned around, but he paused. “Yes, my lady. Go ahead. And my name is Jesper, if you’d prefer to use that.”

“Jesper. Okay. Thank you. Jesper, uhh. How many people died in that… that incident?” I was starting to notice some slight differences in accent when it came to Leyeril. Just like their writing, though they used the same language, there were some slight dialectical changes.

“Are you sure you want to know, my lady?”

“Y-yes. They couldn’t have made that… that plague without me. I want to know. They haven’t let me out.”

“Four hundred and thirty-six,” Jesper said softly. “Another thousand or so quarantined. House Bluewing has been completely decimated.”

“Of course it has,” she despaired. “They—I—courier. Jesper. Can you come listen to me? This plague my family had me create, it, I just wanted to change the world for the better, right? But this, they’re using it to kill their enemies, they’re, they’re—“

“I would suggest consuming part of your package, my lady,” Jesper said. “And I would be more than happy to lend you an ear.”

The memory abruptly started fragmenting, dark lines piercing through it as Jesper approached the door. Not long after, it fell apart, and that line through my body violently snapped me back to reality.

I couldn’t say the sensation of tearing my throat up each time I did one of these was growing on me. Once I purged all the memory fluid from myself and returned it to its rightful capsule, I realized that my nose was bleeding from both nostrils. One of them felt incredibly briny and salty, and I wondered briefly if it was from memory fluid that had come out the wrong way.

Just to be safe, I Body Scanned myself as I wiped it away. There were some yellow points indicating that I had some slight problems, possibly from stressing myself expelling the corrupted parts of these memories, but a quick Heal and a blown nose later, I was fine.

Onto the last memory. Given the story the first three had told, I could guess what capsule 145 was going to contain. I was now completely certain that Neferi was the prodigy that Anaris had been talking about in the first memory. While it was unclear exactly what kind of magic her specialty was in, she had contributed heavily to creating what she called a plague.

Assuming that plague was what I’d seen earlier, I kind of hesitated to say that was the right name for the weapon she’d devised. Then again, it had seemed to spread from person to person, so…

That aside, it seemed like it hadn’t been her choice to deploy it the way her family ultimately had. Though the rest of the memory was corrupted, I had some inkling as to what had happened after Jesper had come in to listen. She’d explained what her family was doing, possibly paid him to try to get Leyeril to get look into it.

I already knew how this one was going to end.

Grimly, I imbibed the contents of the last memory capsule. This one was mostly pure, but there was a single, large black blob that the rest of thememory was cycling around.

The transition, at least, was smooth. One moment I was standing in a hidden, expansive storage room, and the next I was at the edge of a packed city square watching a hooded, chained figure being marched up to a platform placed directly in the center of it.

I knew who would be behind that hood, and so did Jesper. Mixed in with this memory was his own regret, but it was tampered down by a much greater sense of duty.

He couldn’t afford to be emotional about this, even if he’dbeen protective of the girl. This was just business.

Neferi was shorter than I had thought she would be. Though it was a bit hard to judge from a distance, I might’ve been taller than she was in this memory. She was either even younger than I had assumed based on her voice or just abnormally short.

Four fully-armored soldiers accompanied her alongside a single priest-looking woman. Sheathed at her side was a sword whose sheath glowed lightly around the edges with purple.

“The Final Church oversees this ceremony,” she said, her quiet voice audible to Jesper and I even over the racuous crowd. “To the gods above and below, we thusly entrust the soul of the heretic Neferi Whitefall. We offer the body and essence of the one who profaned the memories of the gods who once walked our world, returning it to whence it came.”

One of the guards removed the hood from Neferi. A gasp ran through the crowd. She really was young. Barely a teenager, if that.

“The gods are merciful,” the priest continued. “And they may find your soul worthy of redemption. To those of us bound to this realm, however, we find your crimes unforgivable. You may choose to repent before your death, but your fate as a mortal has been sealed.”

She gestured to Neferi. Some kind of spell disappeared, and Neferi doubled over, gasping for breath. The noble girl I was now seeing for the first time looked around wildly, then cried out.

“Those people died because of me, but they won’t stop dying if you just kill me! House Whitehall gave me up, but they still have the plague. The weapon is still in Leyereli hands! Don’t just forget about this with me!”

“No twisted manipulations will work to prevent your fate, heretic,” the priest said, not unkindly. “Yet I understand your distress. Fear not: all are delivered in death. May the hells be kind to your soul.”

Neferi’s eyes opened wide as the priest unsheathed a gleaming blue-tinted sword taller than the adult was. She strained, but could not move. Instead, she opened her mouth again, building up mana.

“Den boyo nape thano et see, voytheese te—“

Jesper watched as the blade severed Neferi’s head from her neck.

What had her last words been? It wasn’t the same arcane language I knew, but there were uncountable schools of magic. Had that been an incantation?

Neferi Whitefall’s head hit the ground separated from her body.

Hundreds of miles away, I knew, I was getting a notification about her death.

Here, there was no confusion. The crowd was abuzz with jeering, conversation, and some occasional horror at the summary execution of a young, noble girl.

That horror soon became the dominant thread, and with my Danger Sense pinging like mad, it wasn’t hard to tell why.

From Neferi’s headless corpse, the same shadowy wave that had killed off the Bluewing family had begun to spread.

Without even pausing to pithily comment on it, Jesper ran for his life, and the memory soon faded to black.

The transition to wakefulness was like getting hit with a train.

When I spat this fluid out, blood came with it.

As I got my bearings again, my head spinning and my nose bleeding despite my healing, I heard a familiar voice. The regional commander’s.

“How did you get here?” Sebastian asked from the door.