Arcanist In Another World-Chapter 46: Talk

Valens felt rather disappointed to find the qualifications of the bath weren’t up to his satisfaction. It was a shower bath commonly used in olden times, back when the water pipes had to rely on limited sources than the ponds that were tended by Water Magi, fed by distilled and cleansed freshwater so that the supply remained infinite, at least in theory.

But here, it was clearly taken from a well or a storage unit; hence, both the pressure and sanitary conditions left much to be desired. There was also the time he’d spent in what seemed to be a race to see how much his body could accumulate and bear filth, which added another layer of complications to what should’ve been a fairly relaxing and soothing process.

He had to basically scrub the stains off his skin with a sponge as though sandpapering a metal off its rusted surface, and was reminded more than once during the shower that should he go over the five minute limit there would be an extra pay for each minute added.

Valens took a full thirty-minute shower and told the rough guy manning the bath to put it on the Templar’s tab. Money was one thing religious organizations never lacked, and not often you’d see they use it for the cleanest deeds. Valens was rather fond of the idea of putting it to good use for this once.

Outside the bath, wrapped in towels and a face cloth that clearly had seen fair use, he was about to take his time to ease off when he heard a grunt from beyond the little crack on the door. The aforementioned grunt carried a gruffness about it, followed by a set of frequencies higher than that of a normal Miner, mixed into a rhythm of strength beyond mere human. Steps thumped, and the wood groaned and cried, and the moment Garran barged inside, he hurled the clothes into Valens’s face.

“Here, it’s on the house,” he huffed away, banging the door shut after him, mumbling sourly as he knocked another door down the hallway.

“You want to have a good life? Lower your expectations,” Valens muttered with a shake of his head before taking an eye down the clothes. He was greeted by an old pair of trousers likely fashioned from cotton, a white shirt that was surprisingly clean, a short-sleeved undershirt, wool stockings, and white drawers. There was also a great coat that was long, heavy, and seemingly made of thick wool. A practical, if rather outdated, fit for a man who liked to have some comfort against the biting weather of the land.

Valens set the clothes aside, patted himself dry before the long window, and then stood tall to gaze at what he’d become.

A hard face glared back from the mirror. He had creases around his forehead, the work of a scowl he’d been managing against the sacred warriors throughout their bumpy ride, a stubble masking most of his features that he was once proud of, and a pair of blue eyes that seemed to have gained another layer of depth to them. He was due some haircut as well with how the tips of his long strands curled wildly.

He was considered tall in a field crowded by mostly older men and women, who had taken the duty of their servitude over their shoulders and stooped, ever-so-slowly, under the weight of it. It made him stick out like a sore thumb in their midst, a fact that the mantle of the youngest Archmage of the Empire had not helped with certainly. He was used to being hated and lauded, but learned, under Master Eldras’s long yet fruitful lessons, to bear through it.

When he donned the new clothes and took another gaze at himself, he nearly yipped at how ordinary a man he could become with the right arrangements. Whether that was a good thing or not had yet to reveal itself.

…..

Valens found a timid Selin sitting over the edge of the bed with her chin lowered and hands clasped tight over her lap inside the room. It didn’t slip past his notice that the young woman had moved to the bed closer to the room's only entrance. A clear sign of distrust, perhaps not too unwarranted in this case.

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She flinched as Valens folded his old robe and stuffed it under his bed, purposefully gazing out the window so as not to keep the young woman constantly on her heels.

“How do you feel?” was his first question. He’d seen many a scared patient in his long career as a Resonant Healer and had learned from the very best how to deal with them. Patients who suffered from a sick mind especially demanded gentle care, as trying to assert dominance over them had brought more trouble than solutions. A patient that was once taken by shadows and turned into a twisted being of sorts, though…

That was a new case.

“I’m grateful for all the things you’ve done for me, Mr. Kosthal, and I feel completely fine,” Selin said, voice quivering slightly toward the end. She was well-spoken, a must for a Nursemaid serving in a Lady of a respectable stature, and had the habit of picking her words carefully.

“What about those nightmares?” Valens muttered, still gazing out through the window. “You’ve mentioned they’ve been bothering you during the nights, have you not?”

“Those are…” Selin said silently. “Mostly gone.”

“But not vanished entirely?” Valens turned to her with a small smile. “I do appreciate your strong willingness to leave the past behind, however little you remember of it, but we must not glance over the signs still lingering in your mind.”

“But I’m fine!” Selin clenched her fingers, staring away. Her shoulders sagged as she continued, “I can live with a few nightmares. Those things that the Templars spoke of… I don’t have any intention to remember them.”

“You’ve told me you don’t remember where you were from, that how you’ve ended up as a Nursemaid in that Lady’s mansion, that why or when you’ve decided to leave the capital,” Valens said stately. “Do you wish to forgo the person that you were once?”

“I’m… not sure.”

“What are we but a culmination of the memories of a life lived through times both good and bad?” Valens said. “Who would we become without the lessons learned through mistakes that we’ve made? Doesn’t it scare you that the same shadow could find a way through your mind once again since you decided not to pry into the reason why you were taken in the first place? Doesn’t it make you curious to see the why’s and how’s of that particular decision? Or do you believe it was just an unfortunate happenstance?”

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“Captain Edric told me that sometimes these things just happen,” Selin said, chin dipped low. “One doesn’t have to be deep in the claws of the Shadow to be taken by its promises. He thinks it could be an honest mistake, a desperate attempt at turning my life around.”

“He also thought there was no remedy for a soul well lost in the depths of darkness. Look how that turned around.” Valens nearly scoffed but settled for that same professional smile as he nodded tenderly at the young woman. “I can’t force you if your wish is to remain relieved of a past unknown, but I must insist, with prior experience, that what I’ve done was to simply remove that shadow from your body, or in layman’s terms, I have not treated the sickness, but just tended to the symptoms. Whatever it was that forced you into that path is still there, somewhere inside your primal brain, waiting for another chance to take control.”

“P-Primal brain?” Selin stuttered.

“Your most fundamental personality,” Valens said. “It is what keeps us alive most of the time, even though in some cases its methods can be at best considered questionable. It is the reason why your heart begins thumping at the sight of the unknown or why your skin prickles when faced with uncertainty. It’s the voice inside of your head that whispers the notice of danger, of an event that can be harmful to your very being. You mustn’t let it take the reins of your body, but you can’t turn a deaf ear to its pleads either, as it has the tendency to come in light in the times we least expect it.”

“So you believe if I decide to move on with my life as it is, there’s a chance I may find myself in the same position?” Selin asked with eyes widened slightly.

“Perhaps.” Valens eased into his own bed, sat calmly over the rough mattress, and gazed into the young woman’s eyes. He was gaining her trust with each step, but just as easily, he could lose it all together. Therefore, he was trying to make her comfortable, to let her understand that while he could, in fact, mend the part of her mind that was broken, he was also willing to listen and heed her questions. He wasn’t a famed, sacred warrior to be feared, nor was he a nameless man who shouldn’t be taken seriously. He was an expert in the field, and he needed her to believe that.

Valens breathed in before he continued, “There’s no sure answer to your question. It can be that the captain is right, that you've mistakenly taken something you shouldn’t, or came across a ritual of dark origins.”

“What if I did it on purpose?” Selin’s voice dipped into a whisper as she snapped her head at her own hands. “What if I wanted to kill Lady Margaret and her sons?”

“That…” Valens considered for a moment a good answer that wouldn’t scare her off the treatment, but then it occurred to him he was doing something all assistant healers of the field often did against their first few patients. He was trying to be optimistic, to only think of sure solutions to a problem that might lack a true remedy when the job of a healer was to utter truths, and truths only. “That can be the case. As I’ve stated, we can’t be sure of it.”

A deep silence settled between them. Valens let the young woman digest the possibilities. Without her consent, he couldn’t force a Lifeward into her brain and adjust the frequencies, but at the same time, he was rather doubtful whether the Sun’s Church would decide to trust a strange Healer and accept Selin as she was.

That was the main motivation behind this session. Captain Edric had his thoughts on the matter and told Valens that there had not been a case like hers in the past dozen years. He made explicit that the church might decide to take a more risk-free course than let a former Wailborn live a new life. To Valens, it was clear what their choice would be.

They would kill the woman and put an end to this case.

But if, and that was a big if, Selin could call witness to her former memories and paint herself as this innocent, ignorant young woman who gave in to temptation or was forced to be made a minion of the Shadow, then things could take a different turn. Not to mention she would be healed both in body and mind.

“I have a brother,” Selin’s voice was barely a whisper as she raised her head, cheeks wet with tears. “Or I think I had one. I can’t remember. But I do see the same nightmare every time I sleep."

"Oh?" Valens arched an eyebrow at her. "Can you tell me more about this nightmare?"

Selin nodded weakly as she started, "I find myself watching a little house, a one-story wooden house with a tiny porch. There’s a pot by the door, and it’s filled with daisies. I love daisies the most. Bert, the gardener in Lady Margaret’s mansion, used to make sure I had a bouquet every day. He would pick them early in the morning and place them into the backyard in a pot.”

Valens kept his silence as she continued on, her voice becoming silent as tears began pouring down her face.

“I hear cries as I watch the house. A man and a woman. They sound familiar. But I can’t do anything as the flames are too high. Nobody’s there. There’s nothing there but the house. I want to take the pot and save the daisies. I think that’s the least I can do, but the moment I try to take a step, I feel a touch around my waist. I look down and see a child there."

Her brother? Interesting...

"He's holding me tight, and I can hear he's crying," Selin said. "No matter what I do, I can't shake his voice out of my mind. So I bend my knee and caress his hair. His hair is just like mine, long, black, curling at the tips. I tell him everything’s going to be okay and hold him softly. Slowly I lift his chin and gaze into his face.”

Valens scowled as he listened to her tale. This was a rather specific nightmare, which could be a part of her memories still lingering in her subconscious. Life Magi used to treat amnesia this way, forcing the buried memories back to light with the right frequencies, but the practice had been discontinued as it forced the patient to relive their most secret and dark traumas in a fairly short time.

“And?” Valens said when Selin stood senseless as though she was in a trance, blank eyes looking deep into the opposite wall where the stubborn table still resisted its inevitable fate. “Do continue,” he said.

“Right.” Selin came to herself with a surprised blink, then turned and looked at him. “I lift his chin and gaze into his face. But he has no face. That’s where the nightmare ends.”

“Interesting,” Valens muttered. “Do you have any thoughts as to what this nightmare could mean to you? Can it be a real event or a manifestation of your fears?”

“I don’t know.” Selin shook her head. Her eyes were bloodshot, face stained with dried tears. She wasn’t crying anymore, but Valens would’ve preferred that she expressed anything other than that disturbing emptiness in her eyes.

“We should take note of this nightmare—“

“Mr. Kosthal,” Selin cut him all of a sudden, looking at him with wide eyes. “I believe those cries belong to my parents. I know my father and mother died when I was young. I can remember that much. And that child without a face… I think he’s my brother.”

“Your brother?” Valens arched an eyebrow.

“I think he’s still alive somewhere in the capital.” Selin nodded weakly.

“That’s very good, Selin.” Valens praised her. The sheer willingness she’d known by telling him this nightmare alone was admirable. A troubled young woman who didn’t want anything to do with her old life wouldn’t have bothered to speak of such things. It was promising, and Valens decided to strike the iron while it was hot. “So, do you wish to go through with this treatment?”

Selin looked down at her fingers. They were trembling. It took her a heavy moment to lift her chin and gaze at Valens with determination. “I want to remember, Mr. Kosthal. Can you help me?”

Valens smiled soothingly. “That’s the job,” he said, giving her a strong nod. “Take a good rest, now. We’ll start tomorrow.”

…….