Being alone with Rethi was surprisingly unusual.
Most of the time we were accompanied by Mayer, being taught or fighting half to death. But now? We were simply walking someplace, a goal in mind, yes, but a more casual encounter than the intense training and focus we displayed just yesterday.
In fact, I realised I hadn't had a heart to heart with the boy for a good long time, and aside for the trip to the forests our time together, alone, has been filled with a mostly companionable silence with no real conversation of substance.
Now, I was starting to realise that I had been neglecting a prominent emotion in the boy's life. Worry. Worry for his mother, for her future without him, and for a world where he can't afford to help her against the mothers, fathers, daughters and sons of thousands more than just his own.
I sighed as we drew closer to Michael Gram's home. This was going to be an interesting conversation and I was realising that the boy wasn't truly prepared for it, not yet. There was only so much that could be achieved by dragging someone else along on your adventures, like I had unceremoniously done to Rethi, and though he has managed to find his place into being the successor of a divine blade, he was not guaranteed that, by any stretch of the imagination.
"Rethi, let's talk for a moment before we go in." I said quietly, turning into a side path and down behind the row of shops that lined the main through road in the town. Out the back was a severe lack of homes and more than enough space to sit in a patch of grass.
I sat in the grass out the back of Michael Gram's house and shop, and patter the grass next to me, prompting the boy to sit.
As Rethi sat down next to me, I could feel a slight warmth radiating from the boy. His skin had begun to look sun-kissed, instead of it's usual only slightly tanned colour, his dark hair almost inheriting a shine, and I was sure that the hair would be warm, like black hair under the sun. The boy seemed to either not take notice of the changes in his body, or he didn't care.
"How is your mother, Rethi." I asked, keeping my voice low rather than it's usual boisterous loudness. I could feel the boy's mood darken further.
"Not well. Even so, she won't let me see her. I…" He swallowed against a particularly unpleasant memory, "I tried to force my way in once, but it didn't go well." I nodded gently.
"Rethi, we are going to leave, likely in a matter of a week or two. WE have stayed in this small town for far too long, maybe it was my own fear of facing what was out there that stopped me from leaving earlier, but now we have to wrap everything we have up here, and leave for a world outside." The boy's emotions turned into a troubled mess as I spoke, though he didn't vocalize any of those emotions. "Speak, Rethi." I commanded lightly. I needed him to speak to me, at least a little.
"I… I've spent my whole life here, but even so, I have only one thing I need to wrap up." He said, his conviction growing slightly. "My mother is sick and dying, and she won't even let me see her, and there is nothing I can do."
"Of course you can't." I said, plainly. Rethi looked back at me with sad eyes, a disappointment rushing through him, even though he'd said the words.
"That, Rethi, is why we have friends." He barked out a dry laugh.
"Rethi, your girlfriend is a practically preordained to be a master healer like the world has never seen before. I will make sure with all my power that it happens." I said a small smile growing on my face, despite the plummeting morale of the boy in front of me.
"But that doesn't help me now." He growled, almost yelling. I sighed deeply.
"You're right, it doesn't help you right this second. But it will soon. Very soon in fact." He turned to me, a barely concealed anger hidden behind a questioning eyebrow. "I do have a plan, one that I think could really, actually work. One that could possibly save your mother, at least for now."
"What is it? You know that Alena can't heal my mother, right?" Rethi's anger melted away, leaving behind a mix of excitement and worry. An overwhelming sense of worry.
"She can't at the moment." I prefaced, and then sighed when the boy drew a blank, "Rethi, you have to understand that we are going to have to convince two people that will object to this extremely hard." Rethi furrowed his brow.
"What are you going to do, exactly?" He asked again, drawing out the words cautiously. However, before I could respond I heard the sound of a wooden door clacking against it's frame from behind me, causing Rethi to turn away from me.
"Well, what perfect timing Alena, I guess we will be all learning together." I said jovially, almost dreading the next few minutes.
"Okay… what's going on, exactly?" Alena said, concerned.
"Max has a way to help my mother!" Rethi blurted, and I cringed heavily, my eyes scrunching together. Sometimes I forget that Rethi is still really young, only just a teenager and excitable.
"Max. What exactly does this plan involve?" She asked dangerously. Who could have guessed that a young girl could be so terrifying. I turned around to her, an apologetic smile already on her face.
"No. Absolutely not." Her voice was hard and brittle.
"Wait, what?" Rethi said now baffled.
"You cannot make me do that!" She yelled at me, but I looked her dead in the eyes.
"So you will just leave her to die?" I intoned darkly. She froze, and Rethi's eyes bounced between the two of us, not sure whose side he should be on.
"You think I should just take the chance? Roll the dice with her life? You sicken me!" Her voice was dangerously close to screaming, and she turned heel and walked away.
"Woah, woah. What just happened." Rethi said, shock flooding through him, his mind desperately backpedalling, trying to keep up. I laughed humourlessly.
"I just asked your girlfriend to do something that I knew that she'd be against." I grimaced at Rethi's look.
"Your whole plan was to ask her to just... heal my mother?" I rolled my eyes at his disbelieving look.
"Of course not. But it won't matter how much I try, she will see it that way. I need you to help me convince her of my plan." He scrunched his eyes up in frustration.
"What is the plan!" He yelled, frustrated at being left out of my plan. I decided to take pity on the poor boy, and with a grin I began to explain my plan.
"I'm going to intentionally infect myself with Rhy disease."
Now, I'm sure you could hazard a guess as to how Rethi took that last statement. A mixture of surprise, disbelief, calling me a fool, and once I had explained my reasoning, grudging compliance.
The boy had stumbled into the house to convince his girlfriend two hours ago, confused and not entirely sure how to feel about my proposition. But more than anything I saw that he was determined. He knew that this was probably the only chance that she had, outside of a fairly powerful nature shifter randomly coming to town.
Not that I'd be against that happening, but I think we've had enough surprise visitors to last a lifetime. A two literal Gods and a many thousand-year-old Keeper. An interesting track record so far.
Behind me the flimsy wooden door flew open, slamming against the outside wall of the house, and making a mighty cracking sound as it rebounded back into its frame. I turned my face to see an incredibly angry Alena stomp across the grass, right up into my face, and winding back her open palm and slapping me right across the face.
There was obviously no effect, but it still surprised me. She was fuming, face red and what had to be the remnants of tears staining her cheeks.
"You think you can guilt me into healing her? You know the risks, I could turn her into a walking, breathing tumour by mistake!" she growled, barely holding back a wave of tears.
I furrowed my brow. I had expected her to be angry at me, but not also so incredibly hurt. It was a different hurt, old and healed over, but cut anew. I sighed.
"I intend to get you to the point where the risk is acceptable."
"Acceptable? You're saying you think that any level of risk of me turning Rethi's mother into a brainless monstrosity?" I looked at her, seeing past the rage and hurt, past the roiling emotions and seeing the bottom of the lake, the emotion that the water settled on. Fear.
"Alena." I said, a calm overtaking me, "what is her chance of survival?" There was silence for a while, before she opened her mouth, but I could see the acid dripping from her mind before she spoke.
"No, Alena. I do not want a snide remark. I want you to tell me; what are her chances?" There was no response this time, not a movement, though her emotions continued swirling.
"You're right," I said to the unspoken answer, "nothing. No chance at all. She will die, and there will be nothing that anyone can do about. Anyone, except you and I." I felt her emotions swell, anger sapping away and simply becoming fear.
"I can't. I can't do it." I shook my head.
"You can. And we are going to test it over and over until the chances of you failing are so low that you would have to be stupid to not try. Because if you are going to follow me and Rethi around the worlds, this is the price you'll have to pay, do you understand?" Stony faced, I looked at her, analysing her facial features.
She tried to school them into something that wasn't just pure fear, with a healthy dose of hate, what I'd expect when someone was forcing you into doing something you had been terrified of doing for her entire life up until not a few days ago.
"What if I can't? What if it's still too dangerous to heal Rethi's mother?" I let the question hang in the air for a long time, longer than it needed for me to consider it. I could answer it in any hundred different ways, but all of them simply sounded more manipulative than the last, and I was already manipulating the poor girl enough for my tastes. In fact, I was being the asshole here, blatantly manipulating her into a terrible situation. But I had no choice, the only other 'choice' being to let Rethi's mother simply die.
So, instead of a long and impassioned speech about how it wouldn't be her fault, or manipulating her with the death of Rethi's mother, I simply gave her a little, sad smile.
"Can you please get your father for me? I'd like to discuss some things with him, with you present." We stared at each other for a long moment, before she clenched her jaw and walked back inside to grab her father.
They re-emerged only a few moments later. Michael looked unhappy with me, decidedly angry in a way, but much calmer than his daughter.
"Maximilian." He said, his voice dark with emotion. I nodded back to him.
"I'm going to cut to the chase. I want you to infect me with Rhy disease as a test dummy for your daughter to learn how to combat, if not immunize against it." Michael's expression became even darker, though I could see a small light of excitement inside his mind, though it was overshadowed by the darkness of fear and protectiveness of his daughter.
"Why do you want to torture my daughter with this? You are trying to cure Rethi's mother, yes? What use is that, to put a young girl in the position to be the only hope, the only saviour? What if something went wrong? What if she dies because of a freak accident?" I could feel the father and daughter unite against me, but I shook my head sadly.
"Michael. When have you ever had that choice?" I sighed as he narrowed his eyes, "A man appears on your doorstep, bleeding from a knife wound. You know that he has to be treated in the next hour or he will bleed out and die. However, you also know that there is a likelihood that you doing what you have to do, without the correct tools, will kill the man just the same. What do you choose?"
"This isn't even remotely the same as that! I have training, experience, a lifetime of understanding and perspective. I have been working around the sick, dying and dead for decades! She is a child, barely considered a teenager and you want her to make a decision of this gravitas?" He yelled, truly enraged. When I had approached him not days earlier he had been angry, but this was a different level. I understood, I really did, but…
"How long will it be before she holds the hand of the dying, of someone she desperately wants to save, and she cannot? How long before she tries her best, and in the worst possible moment she accidentally creates an abomination? How long until the palace of glass that surrounds her inevitably shatters and there are no other chances?"
"If not now, when?"