Interlude: The Third One - They the Pitiful and Their Aftermath, Or So It Was Told

Caryl Valliere was a lady and a mage who resided in Kukrika, a city in the Principality of Triden. She was not just any mage, though. In fact, she was as good as they came. Widely known to be the best female mage in the city, she was young and beautiful — as attractive as she was talented.

While she might not be a statewide phenomenon, she had acquired celebrity levels of fame within the city. Equally well-known were the preposterous amounts of makeup she applied and her terrible taste in fashion, but these less flattering tidbits had a way of avoiding the ears of the person in question.

Regardless, fame and infamy had convergent effects when it came to bringing people to her door. There was never any shortage of pupils seeking her instruction in magecraft or customers with magely items for her to appraise. At times, she was even asked to craft a trinket or two. The constant supply of patrons meant that she didn’t need to scramble to make ends meet; a leisurely pace of work afforded her a perfectly comfortable living.

She was scrambling now, though, her frantic motions at odds with the carefree lifestyle she was so familiar with. In fact, she was pretty sure she had never worked this hard in her life. Even her surroundings were alien. She wasn’t in her office and home, but a healing hall somewhere in Kukrika, where she labored not in a medicinal ward but an adjoining workshop.

“For the love of… Can someone tell me how things even end up like this?” she griped to the bench and stove around her. They alone adorned the featureless room in which she slaved.

She was making medicine. Brown liquid boiled in the heated cauldron before her, into which she sprinkled some fine shavings. A wooden rod stood abandoned in the cauldron, one end leaning haphazardly against the edge. She grabbed it and used it to stir. Slowly and carefully, she infused the liquid with her mana. As soon as she did, a plume of white smoke erupted from the concoction. She almost choked on the smell.

The entire room reeked, but she resisted the urge to cough. She’d rather not risk getting her spit in the cauldron or blowing away the ingredients on the workbench and having to do everything all over again. The smoke and smell weren’t mistakes; they were part of the process. She had done this many times before. Even so, she couldn’t see herself getting used to it.

Turning away from the cauldron, she stared through tear-stained eyes at her hands, trying to see if she had gotten any of the liquid on them. Once she confirmed that they were clean, she carefully wiped them.

There were, of course, specialized practitioners of medicine-making, but mages proficient at manipulating mana often took it up as a side job. Caryl was one of the latter, who’d sought the skill to make some quick cash. She’d learned how to make medicines with the intention of brewing up a few pick-me-ups or love potions from time to time. Never did she imagine that she’d one day be harnessing every ounce of her pharmaceutical talents, whipping out medicines at full throttle.

“Miss Caryl, isn’t the next batch of medicine done yet?!”

Just as Caryl was about to lose herself in her thoughts, she was yanked back into reality by the loud voice of a young white-robed lady who stormed into the room. The lady’s short hair was tucked into a plain white hat to keep it from getting in the way, revealing a face that showed the signs of extended stress and fatigue. She rushed over to Caryl’s workbench and haphazardly dropped the tray she was holding onto an unoccupied spot, causing the empty bottles it held to totter precariously.

“There’s a patient who’s in critical condition! We need tranquilizers and healing potions! Now!”

“What do you mean critical condition?! Wasn’t it supposed to prevent them from receiving fatal damage?!” exclaimed Caryl incredulously. She kept working as she did, taking the potion she just made and deftly filling each of the empty bottles on her workbench with a certain amount.

To Caryl’s knowledge, mana devices installed in a fixed location had never failed to operate. Unlike magecraft employed on an individual basis, those used in devices was carefully set up and thoroughly tested. Barring physical destruction, such mana devices would always produce the intended effect. The patient in question to which the distressed and uncomfortably loud lady beside her referred had come out of a mana device. That meant the injuries the patient sustained had occurred within the device. The device was designed to prevent lethal damage from being done to anyone within its premises. Clearly, something wasn’t adding up. How could the patient be in critical condition?

“The physical damage, sure. They’ll live — just barely. But that mana device doesn’t protect you from mental damage!”

Caryl kept stirring the liquid in the cauldron as she mulled over the facts. It still didn’t make sense. The job she was currently doing had originally come as a request from the healing house, which had an exclusive partnership with the school that trained adventurers. The school’s training methods erred on the rougher side of things, making it a constant source of injured students. Caryl was no stranger to the system, and she had on various occasions done some part time work for the healing house to help treat the wounded.

This time, however, things were a little different. Normally, they’d see two or three people. Sometimes, a couple more. Currently, the healing house was dealing with over a dozen wounded. That was clearly an abnormally large number. As a result, the healing house ended up understaffed, making everyone involved a little on edge.

But that wasn’t all. Even with the sudden influx of patients, the healing house shouldn’t have been so overwhelmed; normally, it was inconceivable that they’d be receiving patients in critical condition.

“What the hell happened? Did the demon lord run amok at the school?” shrieked Caryl in frustration.

“No, but apparently, someone similar did,” came the nurse’s level reply.

For a moment, Caryl stared blankly, trying to process what she just heard. She’d meant her statement to be hyperbole. She hadn’t expected it to be partially affirmed.

“Huh?!”

“Someone similar was there! It wasn’t the demon lord, but there was an adventurer who was training the students and— Oh my goodness, the way he ravaged the poor souls! Both their bodies and their minds!”

“…Seriously?” muttered Caryl, her tone equal parts ridicule and incredulousness. “How fragile a mind do you need to have for it to be ‘ravaged’ when you know you can’t die—”

Before she could finish, the loud cry of a nurse came from down the hall.

“A student just ran out of the ward! Get him back in here!”

Caryl shot out of the room like a bullet, shoving aside the nurse who was in her way. Having done a short stint as an adventurer before, she was more used to mayhem than the average nurse. It also meant that in the case the fleeing patient turned violent, she’d be able to handle him. Knowing that she could help, she felt compelled to act as soon as she heard the cry of alarm. As soon as she dashed out to the hall, however, she regretted her decision.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

With an earsplitting howl, a large male student came running down the hall, arms and legs flailing so wildly that Caryl wondered how he even managed to stay upright, much less move with such speed.

Unbeknownst to her, the student’s name was Orran. His eyes were as wide as they could be, and his hair was a complete mess. Frayed strands — possibly torn by his own hand — jutted out at outlandish angles, revealing patches of bald scalp. He scratched furiously at his abused head as his zigzagged down the hall in an erratic trajectory, ricocheting from wall to wall. Each time he slammed into one, he desperately rubbed himself against its surface as though trying to escape through the wall itself.

“No! He’s coming! Coming to kill me again! No more! I can’t handle any more of that!”

Caryl was tempted to point out that a person could not be killed “again.” She was also curious as to who “he” was. However, some things had to come first.

“By my command, I command thee. Trails of light, form into bolts of thunder and strike my foes!”

She held back when casting it, but Thunderbolt was by nature a potent spell. It shot down the hall in a straight line at the large and unseemly figure of the male student. Upon impact, the bolt supercharged the student’s already-frantic movements for a moment, causing him to break into a bizarre dance of sorts. Eventually, the spell dissipated, leaving behind a burnt smell and the now-unmoving figure of the student, wispy smoke rising from various parts of his body. Slowly, he toppled forward and fell, causing the approaching nurses to pale. Admittedly, it did look like a corpse hitting the ground.

Figuring that solved the problem, Caryl sighed with relief. She had barely drawn her next breath when more commotion was heard from down the hall past the fallen student. This time, a whole gang of them of appeared, both male and female, and all of them were in the same hysterical state. The sight of a mob of students screaming and wailing at the top of their lungs was honestly somewhat creepy. Caryl felt a pang of horror roll down her spine.

“Geez! Forget this! I’m shooting for their heads, okay?!”

“N-No! You can’t, Miss Caryl! They’re patients!”

On a direct hit to the head, even the weakest Thunderbolt could damage the brain. Lucky victims might get away with lasting physical disabilities. Those less fortunate might never wake up again. The sheer number of students and the disturbing sight they presented had convinced Caryl that there would be no end to this unless she took more drastic measures. She was immediately stopped by one of the nurses.

“Stop them without killing them please!”

“Gah! I hate this! What the hell happened at the school?!”

In her frustration, Caryl blasted the entirety of the hall with a weakened version of a quickcast Thunderbolt. A panicked dash to cover spared the nurses from injury. The fallen student and those who followed him, however, all went flying.

Once the indoor thunderstorm passed, the hall was riddled with what definitely looked like corpses. The nurses who had barely escaped a similar fate quickly emerged from their hiding spots and began carrying the unconscious students back to their rooms. Caryl followed them, walking with deep sighs toward the workshop where she had slaved moments before. Her shoulders were slumped and her steps were heavy. She had, after all, realized that the electrifying conclusion to the commotion had only increased the need for medicines.

A story would later circulate through the rooms and halls of Kukrika’s Adventurers School. It told of a male adventurer, and the entire class of students he annihilated. As it passed from ear to ear, the story would come to gain some frills here and some embellishments there, but one thing never changed. The story always ended with the same phrase: And so, it was said that those students never returned to the school again.

Few, however, would ever come to know that it was a female mage, widely known to be the best in all of Kukrika, who was partially responsible for their grisly fate.