Chp.11: Deadly disease

"Damn. Have you ever seen such a thing?"

"No. Do you think it's a disease?"

"It could also be a curse..."

"Is he really dead in your opinion?"

Several guards were surrounding Alan's body, keeping their distance. Zamor was with them and had ordered everyone not to come within three meters of the body. After all, they couldn't know if whatever killed the lionman was contagious. If they touched it, they could potentially all become infected. If it really was a disease… it could have been everything.

Zamor couldn't remember ever seeing a person vomit blood like that. It felt like he was getting rid of every single drop in his body. And the way he'd been acting… he looked like a complete lunatic. Zamor was one of those who had entered Alan's house after strange noises had been reported and he remembered very well the haunted eyes and the maniacal way in which the lionman bit the rope with which he had tied himself up. And even now, looking at the corpse, he couldn't help but feel a shiver of fear.

Suddenly the sound of heavy footsteps and breaking branches was heard throughout the forest, a sign that something big was approaching at great speed. The guards raised their weapons, but Zamor knew there was only one creature in the whole oasis that could move so quickly despite its enormous bulk, and he made a gesture to them to lower them. After a few seconds, Haku appeared from the vegetation followed by Darbi, both with clearly worried looks on their faces. The two dragons cast a quick glance at the lionman's body, then Haku turned to Zamor: "What happened here?"

Zamor briefly told him what had happened. "I mean, in layman's terms, he went completely insane and ran here, where he died after vomiting up massive amounts of blood. Now, I'm no expert, but I'm sure a person doesn't do this for no reason. I think it's a disease"

Haku looked at the body again. The description that Zamor had given him sounded strangely familiar, and it worried him a lot. I hoped to be wrong. "It could be anything. We need to examine the body to find out"

"I know. That's why I called you" Zamor said pointing at the corpse. "You're welcome, it's all yours"

"Wait! Why does Haku have to do this?" Darbi exclaimed.

"It seems obvious to me: because you dragons can't get sick" Zamor answered. "If it's a disease, then chances are it's going to infect everyone who gets near that corpse. But you don't have to think about such risk"

Darbi fell silent. Indeed what the lizardman said was true: it was common knowledge that dragons were immune to all diseases. And they had had many opportunities to prove it, since they had often eaten sick or even partially decomposed animals and had never even had a stomach ache. Rather than risking a newcomer's life, it made sense to let the dragons examine the corpse, since they were in no danger. However, they didn't know what disease they were dealing with: while it was unlikely it could infect them, there was no absolute certainty.

Haku was aware of this and thought carefully before acting. He thought maybe he should use an avatar, but he wasn't sure if holding a half-decomposed corpse next to a body infected with a strange disease was a good idea: not only would it contaminate the body before examining it, but it could also give the disease a vector to move. In the end he decided that it was better to use his real body, but he would have done it avoiding getting dirty skin, eyes, nose and mouth, in this way he wouldn't have risked getting infected with anything.

He approached the body, grabbed it and turned it over. The scene that unfolded before him was gruesome, and many of the soldiers vomited: the lionman's face was completely covered in blood and eyes, tongue and teeth seemed to have jumped out of his face. In each orifice there was a plug formed by congealed blood. "He died of choking on his own blood" Haku murmured, then he looked at the blood marks on the grass. The trails went in various directions, as if the lionman had moved his head several times to make sure he dirty most of the ground. "If he came here insane… it's possible the disease controlled him to do it. Some sort of mind control…". He looked up and stared at Zamor: "Do you by any chance know if this person had contact with a kori? Even just if he had only approached one of them?"

The lizardman shook his head. "I have no idea. It could be, but I've interviewed a few people and he doesn't seem to leave the house very often..."

"He had" a voice suddenly said. Gord and Brenno were closing fast, followed by the other members of the Council. "We know this man" the minotaur said. "He's one of those who killed an animal and ate it about a week ago. And that animal was a kori"

"As I expected" Haku murmured. "Some time ago I saw a sick kori that had the same symptoms. It was as if he was being controlled by something and was spitting blood profusely on the grass. If this person ate a sick kori… it's possible that the disease is entered into him"

"Did you know this disease existed? And you didn't tell us anything?" Tzegorn exclaimed indignantly.

Haku let out a snort. "Don't start accusing me of things I didn't do. I didn't say anything because I didn't know what it was, because I didn't believe it could be passed on to you and above all because there shouldn't have been any danger of contagion if someone here enforced the rules and prevented people from getting too close to the animals"

No member of the Council said anything. They had no way of rebutting these allegations in the end. And then they had more important things to think about. "A disease that kills you by spitting blood… I've never heard of such a thing" Gord murmured with some concern in his voice.

"The ultimate goal of any disease is to spread" Haku said while going over the various diseases he knew in his mind; all of them seemed geared towards spreading as much as possible. It was as if diseases were alive and had to infect other organisms to survive. "My theory is that this disease uses the kori as vectors to move from one body to another. Look where this man ran before he stopped and spit the blood: he could have stopped much earlier, but instead he came right here, in the deep in the forest, and in this precise spot where the vegetation is lush. A lot of vegetation means that a kori will most likely pass by here soon and eat the grass covered in infected blood, ingesting the disease. So the disease will have found a new host, it will go through its cycle, and then it will force him to vomit again in an area where there is a high possibility of being ingested in another kori. A perfect deadly mechanism, in short..."

"Who cares about these things! It doesn't matter how this disease works, it matters what consequences it will have!" Yuko exclaimed. "If indeed this man got infected by eating a kori, then everyone who ate the flesh of that kori is infected. We slaughtered and served that animal as a main course the day after you caught those offenders red-handed, remember? So now at least a quarter of the village population may already have contracted the disease"

"Incorrect: much more than a quarter" Haku said. "This disease clearly spreads via body fluids. Which means that everyone who has had contact with an infected person, who has kissed that person, or has sex with that person, or touched that person's sweaty clothes, or who that person just sneezed on… everyone is now infected. I say that we are one step away from a deadly epidemic"

The other people present gulped. Even if they were used to it by now, it was really disturbing how Haku could pronounce death sentences or predict massacres without even showing a single emotion. A normal person would have shown at least a minimum of concern, even just a little anxiety, certainly not flat calm. "Maybe we're lucky" Brenno tried to say. "Perhaps this is an isolated case. In short, as far as we know, no one else has shown similar symptoms. And then the meat was cooked..."

"The meat this person ate was also cooked" Haku said. "And diseases have a different incumbency time depending on the individual. And as if that weren't enough, all the epidemics of the past have almost always occurred when a disease traveled from one place to another. Perhaps the body has defenses that they allow you to repel the diseases you know, so when a new disease arrived everyone died. And since this disease probably only exists in this oasis, your bodies have practically no defense against it. So no, I seriously doubt it that this is an isolated case"

Unfortunately this was true: Haku knew thanks to some history treatises that Maldor and Kotaru had read at the Academy of Magic that epidemics were more violent when they appeared in an area where they had never been. Even what was a common cold for people of a certain geographical origin was capable of causing a very high mortality rate as soon as it arrived in a new land. For this reason, scholars from all over the world were convinced that the body learned to defend itself against diseases and that it adapted accordingly, and therefore the populations who lived in areas where this disease was widespread developed greater defenses than those who didn't have never had any contact with it. And given that the strange disease that had just killed Alan had probably lingered in the oasis for millennia, it was unlikely that any of the newcomers who lived there had developed any defenses against it. Their bodies were likely to collapse one by one as the disease reached its climax.

Seeing that concern was spreading, Zamor intervened: "Even if this were an isolated case, we should behave as if it weren't at all. We act as if the worst case scenario were the safe one" he said. "Let's contact Isaac and ask him to prepare as many healing potions as possible. Maybe they will be enough"

Healing potions were the main method by which all peoples of the world reacted to diseases: they were able to cure almost all diseases. Unfortunately, that 'almost' was the problem: there were indeed some diseases able to resist the most powerful healing potions. They could only hope that wasn't the case. "You can also tell Isaac that he can examine this body" Haku said. "This disease spreads in liquids, not in the air. So Isaac just needs to wear gloves to avoid getting infected. If he examines the body, he might find signs of mana or something, and it might be easier to get a treatment"

If the disease had been able to spread through the air, then there would have been no reason to take control of the host's mind and force him to vomit blood on a herb that another host would most likely eat: it would have been enough to force the guest to approach another guest and breathe in his face. As a result, it was virtually certain that it could only spread via bodily fluids. So Isaac could have safely checked. The mage could have noticed residue from some magical source or something, and therefore could have facilitated the healing of the other infected subjects. "I'll go get him" Darbi said before disappearing into the trees.

Haku suddenly stood up as high as he could and sniffed the air. "What are you doing?" Zamor asked him.

"I'm looking for the sick kori I saw a while ago" Haku replied, then his head turned to the west. "Found it! As I guessed, it's still alive!"

Haku was sure that this couldn't be a fatal disease for the kori: with an already so low population, if those animals were affected by a lethal disease they would all disappear in a short time, and with them also the disease. It was more likely that the kori could survive it. And in fact, Haku was able to immediately find the smell of the kori he had seen with Misune. "I'm going to catch him and find out how he survived" he said. "You cordon off this place and let Isaac examine the body, then bury this body… no, burn it. When I'm done, I'll come back and we'll try to put the pieces back together. Hopefully, we'll find a way to make everyone survive"