Madella sat on an old uncomfortable chair outside as she waited for Teerom's and Paley's return. It was nearly nightfall, so she was about to doze off on the spot. The silhouette of Teerom carrying Paley and a bag full of books appeared on the horizon.
She forced herself awake and took a closer look. It was them.
"Teerom! Paley!" She ran towards them, tears streaming down her cheeks. Teerom put his finger to his lips to tell her to be quiet. She slowed down, noticing that Paley was asleep on his shoulder, and gently caressed Teerom's cheek.
"Oh, why did I ever let you go?" She took her dress and wiped some blood off a small wound below his eye.
"It would've been way worse if it wasn't for him." He smiled and carefully transferred Paley into Madella's arms, and dropped the bag onto the ground before his back broke. He put his hands to his back and bent backward, groaning in pain.
"I'm gonna need a massage, mom." He felt each one of his spine's disks crack.
"First take a bath. You stink," She wiped her tears and gave him a light one-armed hug.
When Paley awoke on Jurie's lap, everyone was watching him like the first time he met them.
"He's awake!" Reben and Adimia were dying to ask him questions but suppressed themselves after being lectured by Madella.
"Good morning," Jurie said. He looked up to see her looking down at him with a grin.
"Good morning," He replied, still exhausted from yesterday. His mana was running extremely low, so he was eager to try out the Dyaahn breathing technique to see if he could restore his mana. But being anywhere near Adimia and Reben was detrimental to training, as their short attention span rubs off on you.
"Where's Bacha?" He struggled to sit up.
"I'm over here," Bacha answered with a broken voice from Madella's bed. Her condition had gotten slightly better, but her skin had turned almost as pale as Paley's.
"Hang on, I'll heal your right away," Paley looked around, "Where are the healing magic books?"
"Get some rest first. I don't want you to strain yourself too hard," Bacha said.
"It's just a bit of reading. I'm not gonna be straining myself that much," Paley argued.
"She's right though, you've had a long day." Teerom limped down the stairs with only a towel wrapped around his waist. He just had a shower and water was still dripping down his defined body.
"Teerom! You're dripping water all over the floorboards," Madella rushed over and snatched his towel to wipe the floor clean. "Mom!" he shrieked, covering his balls with his hands. "Six years, and you still haven't learned how to clean yourself properly," She began drying off his body next.
He looked away, face flushed, as the room laughed at him trying to desperately cover his privates while Madella dried him.
"Alright, then you gotta be my test subject," Paley said.
"Test subject?" Teerom asked.
"You hurt your foot, didn't you? Let me try out some healing spells on it later." Paley leaned back into the wall, relaxing in the heat of the fire right next to him. Jurie got up and walked over to Teerom with a change of clothes in her hands.
"A token of thanks, for getting me all those books." She couldn't make eye contact as she gave him the hand-knitted tunic and trousers she made for him while Paley slept.
"Ah, you should be giving this to Paley, he's-" Teerom began but quickly stopped when Paley shot him a dirty look. "I don't need clothes, thanks, Teerom. Though, I do need whatever memory you have. How did you remember all the books that Jurie wanted?" Paley smirked.
"A-Ah, you flatter me." Teerom awkwardly laughed and accepted Jurie's gift. She left to go upstairs, excited to read her new books.
"I appreciate the thought and all, but I really want to get reading." Paley stood up.
"Why so eager? Bacha's doing better now, right?" Adimia said and looked at Bacha, who was staring at Paley with a worried expression.
"She's not. She's dying." The words made the room fall silent, "You're just pretending to look better, aren't you?" Paley almost glared at Bacha.
"W-What're you talking about?" She asked hesitantly.
"Why would she do that? And how do you know?" Rauba asked.
"While we were in the library, I skimmed through the first book as we went to the third floor. The first few pages were filled with intricate diagnosing spells, which I memorized quickly. So I used one of them on Bacha, which determined if someone's going to die and when. Bacha's gonna die in five hours if you don't let me help her." Paley's cold tone nearly scared them, but they were more worried about Bacha now.
"Bacha, are you really pretending?" Madella asked.
Bacha looked away with guilt, her heart's beat weakening every second. She found respite when Paley's icy yet warm hand grasped hers. "You're insane to be able to hide so much agony. In a good way." He sat beside her and held his hand out towards everyone else. "Bring me the books, please,"
Healing magic, like any other magic, has a bunch of different spells for different situations. You can have a spell for something as simple as swelling or something specific like a growth. ( People call tumors growths )
Bacha was sick with something similar to the bubonic plague. But instead of the black bulges being on the outside, they pushed against vital organs inside the body. It was a miracle that one didn't completely stop her respiratory function or damage her heart.
Paley looked through all the books for two hours before he found a section on a disease called ' Negasus ' which perfectly described the symptoms and diagnosis that he made.
After preparing himself by cautiously memorizing what to visualize and how to transfer your magic essence into healing essence, he called Teerom down to experiment on him.
"Are you sure you can do this? I don't want to lose my foot or something." He asked as he put his foot up on a chair.
"Don't worry, the worst that can go wrong is I give you an incurable disease," Paley joked and held his hands out towards his foot. First came the diagnosis. Microscopic cracks lined the heel, and some of the muscle fibers would take too long to rebuild naturally.
Paley switched from diagnosis mode to healing mode, emitting a soft green glow from his hands. It surrounded Teerom's foot and slowly seeped in, making his foot warm up and cool down extremely quickly. He clutched his chair from the strange ecstasy of the healing magic.
Paley finished much faster than Teerom thought. It only took about ten seconds to fix his bone and muscle perfectly.
"Try walking," Paley said. Teerom stood up and found that his limp was completely gone as he made his way to the door. "You're amazing, Paley." He smiled at him.
"Thanks, I better get to healing Bacha now," Paley turned to Bacha, who was sleeping on Madella's bed.
"How did you heal me without saying a magic word?" Teerom asked as Paley used the Dyaahn technique to replenish his mana. Healing magic turned out to be much more taxing on mana than the elemental magics.
"Maybe I'm just great." He breathed out and targeted all of his mana on the places where the black bulges grew inside Bacha's body. The black growths fought back against his magic, but his healing magic crushed them violently and made them slowly seep out of Bacha's body.
Next, he spread out the green healing essence across her entire body. Healers had no idea why this worked to get rid of an illness, but it was because they were killing off any remaining pathogens in the body.
In a matter of minutes, color returned to Bacha's skin. Her breathing was regular now, and her heartbeat was strong. She was cured. Paley wiped off the remnants of the black growths on her skin and then wiped the sweat off his forehead.
"Paley!" She jumped him, hugging him as tight as she could. "Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!" Tears began to form in her eyes.
"You're welcome," He hugged her back while diagnosing if there were any other problems. She was clear of any illness.
"I'll never forget what you did for me," She sniffled and sat up on Madella's bed.
"Everyone!" Teerom shouted and all the other orphans burst into the cottage. Adimia and Reben sprinted over, shaking from excitement. "She's back to normal!" Reben exclaimed. "Wow, it's like she was never even sick," Jurie stroked Bacha's cheek. Amasha watched in awe from a distance.
Paley walked past the orphans crowded around Bacha and stood next to him. "You're amazing," Amasha said. He felt an incredible admiration for Paley. "You flatter me," Paley ruffled his hair and made his way out the door.
"Wait!" Bacha waded through everyone and ran to him, "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to train my magic."
"Before you go," She pulled his head down and smooched him on the forehead, "As a token of thanks."
"Token accepted," Paley returned a kiss on her forehead and walked towards the forest.
"Wanna go watch?" Adimia suggested.
"Obviously!" Reben raced him out, following Paley.
Teerom walked over to Madella and Jurie, sat with Bacha, Rauba, and Amasha. "Long day, huh?" He sat down and took a deep breath. "Would've been even longer without him," Madella began, "He's only bought good things on us since he washed up here. Like some sort of angel." She laughed lightly.
That angel was now training his elemental magic with a ghastly determination. Like a bodybuilder would do different workouts in sets, he practiced the elemental magics for lengthy periods.
He couldn't help but think back on all the dark auras he saw in the city as he cleared a house-sized area in the forest and erected four stone pillars to use his magic on. 'Why're there so many bad people?' He asked himself as he began launching firebolts at the pillars.
After fire magic, he practiced water magic by creating water at the base of one of the pillars, then moving it up the whole pillar was covered.
For earth magic, he just made the stones change shape in a way that they couldn't withstand gravity. This way, he would have to keep cycling the stone upwards to keep it standing up.
Air magic was the simplest. He discovered that he could create sharp concentrated blades of air, which could cut through anything, as long the target was less dense than the air magic.
This became his everyday training regime. After a while, he came to yet another discovery while he was eating a rich turkey with everyone. Whenever he ate, instead of replenishing his mana, it would expand it. Meaning that where everyone else would have to focus and meditate for months to expand it just enough to learn another few spells, he could just eat something.
In other words, he had unlimited power.
He read through all of the healing magic books and memorized all of the spells for every single disease. He could cast them one after the other since he didn't have to say the incantation or make the hand signs.
Eventually, he could even cast Firebolt and other elemental spells with his hands in his pockets. The breathing technique Dyaahn became second nature to him, and he could use it while Adimia and Reben were around.
Every day, at the dinner table, Teerom began telling everyone of the great feats that his childhood hero, Aneros, accomplished. The book that he stole turned out to be an adaptation of Aneros' companion's biography his travels. It turned out that Aneros was the third Quimnia of four, including Paley.
That reminded Paley to begin reading the Quimnia's book.
He waited for everyone to go to sleep and made his way to the hill, where under the starlit sky, he began reading the book while biting into a juicy apple.
The book began with a lively personality, Manoha, a woman in her early twenties. She spoke of the great things that a Quimnia can do; Create mountains, reduce a city to cinders, create life, and so on.
Paley found himself more and more confused as he neared the end of the book. She didn't mention being able to cast spells without incantation and hand signs. There was nothing to explain why Paley's mana would grow whenever he'd eat something either. Most of the book was just her and her friends' adventures.
'This is just another biography,' Paley thought as he finished the book, not learning anything at all from it. Apart from a bit of history.
"Paley?" Reben snuck up on him, startling him slightly.
"Hey, what's up?" Paley replied.
"Can you do me a favor?" Reben asked awkwardly and sat down next to him.
"Sure, what'd you want me to do?"
"I-It's kinda hard to say..." Reben swallowed and composed himself, "I've got a... uh... I've got a problem with my willy."