Chapter 1: Graduation

Chapter 1: Graduation

Edwin stared at the exam questions before him. This was his final exam in the Miteston Healer Academy. If he didn't get in the top 90%, he was going to get assigned to the first Torklia Regiment. Or worse, the navy.

During a routine sweep of a village, you notice a peasant with swelling on the limbs. What do you do?

Well, that was a tricky one. A swelling could mean a wide range of diseases, some of them contagious. He decided to play it safe and wrote.

Depending on other symptoms: the color of the tongue, the brightness of the eyes and size of the iris, it could be rat bane sickness with its different variants. The patient must be put in quarantine while all the clues are rounded up. Once he is properly diagnosed, and he is no danger to the water or food supply of the settlement from which he hails from, he can be treated.

Normal treatments of rat bane sickness include inhalations with snow drop herbal tea. Blood infusions, no more than 300 grams if the blood group is different from the patient's. Feeding of moldy bread, baked beforehand so only the good qualities of the mold remain. And, if all else fails, mana infusion.

Important: The mana of the healer has to be similar in nature to the mana of the patient. In all other cases, the mana infusion can't be longer than three minutes. In the case the healer has a necromancer type mana, then the infusion is not advised at all.  

That was not to imply that necromancers didn't make good healers, Edwin tried to reassure himself. It was just that their mana was poison. But one could heal just fine with a blood infusion, a scalpel and herbs. Just because he could talk to ghosts didn't make him any less of a healer!

Thinking that he needed to include other diseases for variety's sake, he racked his brain for something he could add. There had been a terrible case of widow's tears last year that had nearly passed for rat bane. It was worth adding.

Another possible cause for the swelling is the widow's tears. The patient, unlike patients with rat's bane, feels coldness in the limbs from lack of proper blood circulation.

Warmth is the best medicine for this disease. Warmth and the usual medicine for low blood pressure. Wine and sugary food. Mana infusions are ill-advised as during widow's tears the veins in the legs are particularly delicate, and the buildup of blood can explode in them, leading to death.

Satisfied, Edwin went to the next question.

You are assigned to the Torklia Regiment, archers' unit. The archers suddenly complain of poor eyesight in the eve of battle. What do you do?

Well, that was an easy one. Edwin smiled as he began to write.

This is a case of either a curse, in which a mirror curse by a necromancer will lift the effect from the friendly faction archers and put it on the enemies. Or the result of a gas being let out in camp.

The eye is one of the most delicate parts of the body. It should be washed with warm water and carefully fed mana. Again, it is not advisable for a necromancer healer to act in this matter.

He nodded at his question and looked around. His fellow healer trainees were writing away in their sheets of paper. The instructor, Professor Alberta Jerkins, was looking at them all with approval.

Their eyes met, and Professor Jerkins tapped her desk twice with an amused smile. Edwin smiled sheepishly and turned to the last question on his list.

A plague is spreading from the Alanqian Empire into our country, Duria. The emperor of the Alanqian Empire does nothing. Not only that, but he also threatens that all healers caught helping the sick will be trialed as criminals. You are ordered to help stop the plague from spreading into Duria regardless. You will:

A sour expression marred Edwin's face. They had an entire semester with such problems, and they have always left a foul taste in his mouth. This was a genocide scenario.

The Alanqian Empire was bigger and more populated than Duria. Small Duria, which had only five cities, four of them more like towns than cities. If a million alanqians died, the emperor wouldn't care. But that was a million ways to spread the plague into Duria. And Duria didn't need that many, either. What with its 236,000 population?

This type of question shouldn't be here, in a healer's final test. It should be set before the aspiring officers that would spend their days either in the navy or the Torklia Regiment doing nothing.

But Edwin knew the "right" answer, and so he wrote it.

I will go to the border and help heal the refugees streaming from the empire. But…

And suddenly Edwin got a defiant spark in his heart. Alanqians or Durians, life was life. For once, he was going to give the right and honest answer to this type of question. The answer all healers practiced, if not preached.

I will go to the Alanqian capital of Barcien and spread my findings of the cure or favorable treatments to the local healers. The emperor can frown at outside help, but if done in secret, he can't stop his healers from healing their own people.

There, let them throw him in the regiment now. He was not going to twist his words to land a good place among the healers in one of the hospitals in the five cities. Besides, corrections to the answers were not allowed, unless it was proofreading for spelling mistakes.

As he thought that, he decided to check over his writing for some obvious errors. He found some missing commas, had to put a line between two letters that were nearly forming a new one, and he found he had written a g instead of q in Alanqian.

Apart from that, his handwriting was readable, and his diagrams and drawings were masterfully made. He particularly liked his drawing of a heart, half of it missing, showing the veins, arteries, and the valves, among other things.

"Ok, pencils down and form a line," professor Jerkins said, and Edwin stood with his test, looking forward to the result.