"There is a cure! We can save his majesty!"
Unexpectedly, these words didn't come out of the old alchemist's mouth, but from a clairvoyant instead.
"There is a cure! We can save his majesty!" Naya shouts at the top of her lungs.
"There is a cure! We can save his majesty!" She repeats, her words echoing from her tree. While elves are naturally good at parkour, some are only at the level of 'climbing' just like Naya.
That is why Naya can only shout. She would love to just run and meet with the Princess, but she cannot. Moreover, her body is currently weak due to the sequelae of forcing her Clairvoyant abilities to accurately see a 'specific' type of information from the future.
"Bring me paper and quill! Please spread the word." She adds, continuing to advertise that she has a cure for the terribly 'sick' Elf King.
While the old alchemist Allenwood tries to gloss it as manageable, the truth of the matter whether in the eyes of a normal elf or a physician, the Elf King's state is nothing but terrible.
The news of Naya's claim of a cure quickly reaches Kara's ears. Kara sets off immediately to meet Naya.
...
Naya who is sitting on a poorly made chair is opposite Kara. Usually, they have a session in which they exchange dialogues. This is Kara's method to ensure that she is on the right path. At least once a week, Kara makes sure to allocate time for conversing with Naya. While it is just 'talk', for Kara, it is more like counseling.
However, this time, Kara is meeting Naya for a different reason. If there is really a cure for the ailing King, it can only do them well. In Kara's heart, the earlier the King can return to duty, the better the future of the elves will become.
The power of a Clairvoyant is purely mystical in nature. It has the essence of mysticism focusing on the elements of time, vision, future, past, and fate. Naya is not a proper Clairvoyant who has undergone training under the tutelage of a master, but her 'intuition' remains a valuable asset for Kara.
Albeit lacking proficiency in her own powers, Naya's natural foreseeing powers are not so poor it is ignorable. No matter how trivial, Naya's every passing vision has value. Moreover, Naya is working hard for the sake of the elves. Since her daughter's death, Naya has been changing a lot… She has more grit to her and decisiveness that doesn't pale in comparison to the veteran warrior elves.
In a hollow inlet inside a tree's trunk, Naya and Kara share a table where what remains of their parchment and ink idly sit. Kara grinds the solid block of ink to the inkstone for Naya to dip her quill.
Naya starts drawing with finesse.
While busying herself with the quill and limiting herself to a few mistakes, Naya narrates the logic behind her actions. "I glimpsed into the future. To put it simply, I accurately pinpointed the time when Allenwood, our old alchemist, finally created the 'cure' for his majesty. I watched the whole process and memorized what the herbs he used looked like. With this, the old alchemist can shorten the time he will be needing to create a cure for his majesty."
Kara is listening with rapt attention clearly in disbelief of this miraculous power.
Naya carefully 'draws' the 'images' from her dream.
The clairvoyant's 'dreams' or 'visions' are not so frequent and accurate that Naya can abuse them as much as she likes. However, lately, she is learning a trick around it— consuming lifespan— a very 'orthodox' method for mystics.
According to Allenwood, the elves are pioneers of the mystical arts, mainly revolving around the sacrifice of lifespan. With Naya's persistence, she manages to improve her supernatural abilities by exhausting her vitality.
It might not be obvious at first glance, but the fatigue is clearly there. The multiplying wrinkles around her eyes, the slight eye bags, and the pale cheeks are evident physical manifestations of her accumulating exhaustion.
"Aunt Naya, thank you…" Kara softly tells Naya, not as a princess, but just as a simple girl... or maybe somewhere in her heart, as a daughter sharing the royal name 'Zorun' with the King. "Really, thank you…" Kara feels a hint of guilt despite it being voluntary on Naya's part.
Naya merely smiles at Kara's words. "No, it is I who have to thank you, your highness… I really liked your stories about your time with my daughter and his majesty… Though the stories might appear boring to an idle listener, to me, it is very entertaining. These little bits of stories are what allow me to rise up again after all… Sometimes, I feel guilty that I even told her of my 'vision' back then in the Urden County…"
Bitter, but not overly bitter… Naya recalls the blurry memories of being in her daughter's embrace while her abdomen is red with blood. It is a very peculiar experience. At that time, her Clairvoyant abilities are still weak. However, at the touch of her daughter, and with the sudden rise in her emotions, she suddenly sees a 'vision' with multi-variant possibilities revolving around a silver-haired elf.
Rather than just a vision, it is more of a vision consisting of multiple sub-components of compound possibilities. In all of that possibilities, the silver-haired elf always ends up dying, while Zeraya ends up crying. Naya can still recall Zeraya's screeching of 'his majesty', and also the subsequent annihilation of the Elf Army.
It is strange.
How can such a single elf possess so much 'fate' hovering over his head?
Naya continues to draw the shape of herbs on the parchment. She has experience with the arts, and sketching herbs in her memory is not difficult for her. Finally, she finishes drawing the 'herbs' in her memory.
"Your Highness… Thank you for trusting me…" Handing out the sheet of parchment to Kara, Naya abruptly starts coughing blood.
Kara panics and almost drops the sheets of parchment, but Yirlung is on her side. The old elf swiftly holds Kara's hands that almost drops the important sheets. Yirlung then comes to Naya's side having her drink Allenwood's Life Potion prototype.
"I am fine now," Naya pushes Yirlung away as she takes a breather. "Your Highness, the visions are very slippery. I had to hurry drawing these lest I forget what they look like. So I am sorry I was not able to pay attention to proper etiquette."
Kara shrugs Naya's apology as the elves are not someone who really pay attention to strict etiquette. "Please don't… I might be royalty now, but I am not a human… I am an elf. But you really scared me when you suddenly started shouting."
Naya softly laughs. "We really need bridges to connect the trees…"
"Noted," Kara dully replies as she awkwardly scratches the back of her head. "Ha ha ha… I should go now. I will have Allenwood look at this." Laughing half-heartedly, she excuses herself from Naya.
Leaving Kara to her task, Naya peacefully watches Yirlung carry the Elf Princess on his back and sets off to find Allenwood.
Naya lies on her back feeling the prickling sensation in her skin. The pain stabs her heart like a knife. Blood dots seeps from her pores.
"I think… that was over fifty years' worth of my lifespan…" She softly mumbles an approximate estimate of the life span she squanders. In the future, she might use more of this 'lifespan' so she has to be thrifty.
At this point, her life has become too important. If she wishes not to sully the memory of her daughter, she must do her best to live longer so that she can contribute more. The 400 to 500 years of lifespan is just a rough measurement of how long elves live. There are some records of elves reaching over 550 years old, so the average measurement of lifespan doesn't apply. Considering the vitality in the equation, an elf's total lifespan might be more than the average norm.
"Looks like, I have to be careful of my health, aiisshh… I feel like growing old already and fast."
Lying flat on the insides of the hollow portion of the tree, Naya slowly falls to sleep.
The ability to see to the future is a gift, but it can be as much as a curse. Naya tries to forget the painful memories. She does her best not to show her weakness, but regardless, it is unavoidable that she will be hurt.
Back then, all before losing Zeraya, Naya once has a prophetic dream of the humans' attack on the Lorekleim Forest. In her imprisonment, she always recalls those painful memories of the burning Clearwater Village. Now, she doesn't even feel any semblance of pain from that memory. Because overshadowing this old pain is a new pain— one that will be hurting her for a long time.
Naya wakes up, abandoning the nightmare that has been plaguing her for some time. The picture of her daughter's death that so accurately depicts in her mind from her Clairvoyant powers is so hateful… It is becoming a sickness, one that she tries to fight with all her might.
A 'Clairvoyant's Cure' is the future. Naya can only move on from the past, and move forward. By peering through the future, she hopes to seek a better tomorrow.