Chapter 46 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 46: Flame in the Swamp 02
May had grown very warm, and several violent rainstorms had swept through in succession.
The wheat sown last winter had turned golden. Wind rippled through the fields in waves, and the southerly breeze carried with it a mingling of heat and the sweet scent of grain. Great swathes of trees filled the air with the unbroken drone of cicadas, loudest at noon and deepest in the night, when they disturbed even the heaviest sleep.
The air was thick with sweltering, suffocating heat.
In such a season, a plague would spread at a terrifying pace.
But was the human world’s current medical standard able to handle this disaster?
On that point, Stasia had a great deal to say: "Not a chance. Those idiotic so-called physicians. Some boil up a family cure-all into a broth and make people drink it, others take a knife to the patient and bleed them. If you're counting on them, that's genuinely the most hopeless thing in the world."
Kelsey added: "You're talking about the personal physicians of the nobility. When commoners fall ill, they either rely on folk remedies passed around the neighborhood, or they simply endure. From what I know, those folk remedies come in all manner of strange and varied forms, and many of their steps amount to little more than prayers for divine mercy. Some people have died from the remedies themselves, when their illness wasn’t even severe to begin with."
Lucita thought it over. "My current thought is that we wait a couple of days until you’re both in better shape, then follow the route Kelsey took here and travel back along it, helping wherever we can. What do you think?"
Stasia glanced at Kelsey. “I’m fine with it.”
Kelsey turned away and broke into a fit of violent coughing, her frail frame rattling so badly it seemed she might come apart. It was a good while before she recovered herself.
When she finally spoke, her voice carried a quiet weariness. “Of course. I simply didn’t expect someone like you to care so earnestly about what happens to us humans. Your kindness is truly moving.”
Lucita could hardly explain that she herself had probably once been human, not to mention the world crisis or the pocket watch's warnings. She had no choice but to accept Kelsey's praise with an awkward smile.
Stasia raised another concern: "There’s also the issue of two ingredients in the formula, bittercress and buckthorn. They’re magical herbs, and exceedingly rare in the human world. In all my years, the only place I’ve ever seen magical herbs growing in any real abundance is Irttat. Once we leave, we may face a serious shortage."
"Probably because of the elves," Lucita said, recalling what she'd read in the town records. "Elves have a natural affinity with plants. Wherever they’ve lived for a long time, rare herbs are far more likely to appear."
Stasia pondered. "I’ve always made it a habit to prioritize broad applicability when compounding formulas, a habit from practicing medicine outside. I preferred working with common herbs. Those two magical ingredients were a last resort, because I genuinely couldn’t find substitutes nearby. Perhaps once we’re out there, we’ll be able to find something that can replace them."
They deliberated at length, and ultimately decided to take advantage of Irttat's resources first — prepare a large supply of the decoction while they had the chance, then venture out to test what common herbs might be found elsewhere on the continent, and gradually refine the formula from there.
This was where Lucita's personal space came in useful.
As a side note, Lucita's space had by now reached one hundred liters, with a holding duration of a full month.
Fifty liters seemed to have been a threshold of sorts. After that point, the mental effort she expended to maintain the space had dropped off noticeably, and as a result the rate at which the capacity grew had accelerated markedly, from fifty liters to one hundred had taken barely half a month.
She had suspended her work taking orders for storage necklaces, and poured all her energy into producing space containers instead.
On the other hand, collecting herbs was a problem of its own.
Even with the abundance of magical herbs growing around Irttat, herbs were still herbs, growing scattered through the hills and forests, impossible to gather in large quantities overnight.
Setting aside magical herbs entirely, even ordinary medicinal plants, without any deliberate prior stockpiling in the town, would be nearly impossible to collect in significant quantities within such a short time.
Kelsey proposed offering to buy at high prices publicly, enlisting the children and the hunters to help with collection.
Unfortunately, both Stasia and Lucita were too poor to fund this. More precisely, there was not a single wealthy person in the entire town. The town's comfortable abundance of resources was more than enough for the residents to live easy, carefree lives, and what people typically stored away was winter grain, not cold silver coins.
Stasia had considered turning to Garcia for help — the magical herb shop was bound to have some surplus stock — but that door had been closed too.
Neither Lucita nor Kelsey was surprised.
Setting aside the deep enmity between elves and humans, Garcia might not have been willing to help in the first place. And even if she were, how much could a single small-town herb shop realistically have on hand?
Garcia was one of the better options. If they went to the elves or the mermaids, those parties might well be celebrating a human catastrophe rather than lifting a finger to prevent one.
At a loss, Lucita opened the book on spirit arts that the mermaids had given her.
“Ordinarily, the minds of intelligent beings are too complex. We begin by learning to enter the minds of non-intelligent creatures…… We start with clownfish. Once you can control a clownfish with a single shift of thought, you can attempt larger animals. A dolphin, for instance, or even a whale.
Be cautious. While controlling their minds is quite easy, carnivorous whales are still physically formidable enough to pose a threat to us……”
“When you can withstand the mental resistance of intelligent beings and break through the labyrinth of their minds, if you turn back to controlling non-intelligent creatures, you will be surprised to find that you can already plant seeds of your own within their minds.
At that stage, their mind is your mind, their eyes are your eyes, you may even alter their biological instincts……”
“Of course, I imagine you can already guess the next step. Beyond controlling non-intelligent creatures lies the control of intelligent ones.
This is extraordinarily difficult, because from here it will not only test your mental control, but also your mental strength and stability.”
“You must gain absolute dominance in a sustained contest of wills with an intelligent being, and then erase their consciousness…… During this process, if your mind sustains even the slightest damage, even a successfully made puppet will not be worth the cost, because damage to the mind cannot be repaired.”
“If you repeatedly use this art when you cannot guarantee the integrity of your own mind, you will reduce yourself to something expendable, and ultimately descend into an irreversible madness……”
Lucita sat for a long while in the study, lost in thought.
That same afternoon, she took her longbow from the tool chest by the door.
She had not come to the forest in a very long time. The leaves of the water firs and paulownia trees had grown thick and deep, and even the flecks of light filtering through the increasingly narrow gaps between leaves were bright enough to make one squint.
Cicadas rang without pause; birds called from time to time; the shadow of a wild hare flickered through the undergrowth now and then.
Her mental power had been growing steadily along with time, but wary of Garcia's warning after her first accidental use, she had never had an opportunity to test it.
With this book of spirit arts in hand, she had found a new way to experiment.
And now, her innate mental gift seemed to have quietly grown to a new threshold……
Lucita drew her bow and nocked an arrow, taking aim at a grey hare crouching behind the undergrowth.
With a soft thrum the arrow cut through the air. The hare cried out and began to bleed, slowly.
She crouched before the grey hare, turned her attention inward, and entered its mind.
Just as expected, the mental world of a non-intelligent creature was formless and blank.
Lucita tried planting a small mental suggestion, and it settled easily into the hare's mind, quickly dissolving into that formless void.
She drew out the arrow and placed her right hand over the wound.
A ripple of light passed over it, and the wound closed at a visible pace, leaving behind only a patch of blood-matted fur to testify that it had ever existed.
The grey hare stirred in a dazed sort of way and scurried back into the undergrowth.
Lucita was in no hurry. She plucked a grass stem and bit it between her teeth, found a shaded spot, and sat down to rest for a while.
Before long, the grey hare came trotting back, a sprig of sage in its mouth, and circled her twice.
She spat out the grass stem and took the sage from its mouth.
The sage leaves still bore the traces of morning dew; its soft purple petals clustered together in varying shades, its fragrance faintly bitter yet cool, brushing against her face with a gentle, soothing touch.
She patted the hare's small head, and a smile spread across her face.
It worked.
She had a quiet sense that this was far from the limit of what she could do.
Lucita picked up her longbow and rose to her feet again.
Before long she spotted a squirrel.
This time she made no attempt to catch it, the moment she caught sight of it, she extended a tendril of mental awareness.
Small animals moved quickly, but fast as they were, they could not outpace a thought. Lucita had already entered its mind and planted her mental suggestion.
The squirrel chittered and chattered, then darted forward and vanished between the branches.
It returned with a buckthorn berry.
Lucita took it from the squirrel's small paws, and had a fair sense by now of where things stood.
She slung the longbow over her back and wandered at leisure through the forest.
Hares, squirrels, deer and roe deer, even the black bear that had once given her a fright, and the great cuckoos and white storks among the trees……
The little animals bustled busily in her wake. Lucita watched the herbs in her hands accumulate, little by little, and felt a deep satisfaction settle over her.
Her main targets were bittercress and buckthorn berries. The other herbs she needed only in moderate quantities. They could likely be sourced in the human world, or even purchased at an apothecary.
By the end of one afternoon, one of her hundred-liter storage necklaces was already full.
At dusk, Lucita left the forest with a trail of small animals following behind her.
She ruffled the grey hare's head: "Thank you all. In a couple of days I'll remove the mental impressions from you."
The hare gave two small chirps, nuzzled her hand, and bounded back into the undergrowth.
The animals scattered in every direction.
On the third day, once she had gathered enough herbs, Lucita erased the mental suggestions from all the small animals and released them.
Stasia and Kelsey had no idea where Lucita had managed to obtain so many herbs, but from the moment she had begun testing the medicines, they had both grown accustomed to Lucita's air of mystery, and knew better than to ask too many questions.
They borrowed the large pot in the back kitchen of Lily's Tavern and spent an entire day simmering — five great cauldrons of decoction in all, every drop loaded into the storage necklaces Lucita had prepared. It filled three necklaces strung full of shells, which clinked and rattled when lifted.
Listening to the soft jangling of the shell chimes, Lucita wiped the pot soot from her face and let out a long breath.
Though the townspeople were not particularly fond of the human world, the half-bloods' stance was at least neutral.
When it came to the matter of going to help, Javena hesitated briefly, then agreed to their request and lent them the town's communal carriage.
In just a few short days they had prepared everything they needed, packed their things, and climbed aboard the carriage leaving town.
Violet had been curious about the present-day human world and was willing to come and see it for herself, and Linnea need not even be asked. Lucita would have welcomed the extra company too, but the house still wasn't finished, and someone had to stay home to keep watch.
The two of them expressed their deep dismay at losing an excellent cook.
Violet asked: "When will you be back?"
Lucita glanced at the now towering haystack and the half-built house, made a rough calculation, and answered: "Before summer ends."
There was a little over a month of summer left. Long, but not so long; short, but not so short.
Violet thought it over. "The house should be just about finished by then."
Lucita nodded, and lifted her eyes to the distant mountains. "Yes," she said. "It should."
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