Chapter 3: Lesser Blood Lily
Nadran walked over to a bookshelf that was stacked to the ceiling with books, scanning over the titles to try to find the book he was looking for. While it pained him to have to spend 10 slate pieces in order to enter the public library, especially when his family barely had enough money to survive as it was, he had no choice. This was the cheapest way to figure out how to heal his father, and this was not a place that was as easy to infiltrate as the lecture halls, especially with a grand total of 0 windows in the entire building, so he had no choice but to pay the fee.
[There it is!] Nadran mentally exclaimed in delight, grabbing an old and battered book that looked to be thousands of pages thick off a shelf. Despite it's clear extensive use, the title seemed to have an aura about it that commanded respect. Sacred Elm Herb Compendium was written in a bold font across the cover in an ink that was still pitch black, even after decades of use. This was the single most exhaustive list of herbs that was available to the general public, and although Nadran had spent his entire life picking and selling herbs, he was still unable to recognize 9 out of 10 plants contained within its worn pages.
[If anywhere speaks of herbs that could save my father, it would be here. Or rather, I'm sure there are many such plants that could help, but I need to find one that I could actually acquire,] Nadran thought, furrowing his brow as he tried to skim through the pages. Thousands of herbs flashed through his eyes as he desperately searched, some looking ordinary, while others looked more like finely crafted treasures than natural herbs. Despite the fact that he likely still had a few days in which to save his father, Nadran could not help but feel rushed, unable to calm himself or slow down at all, not wanting to let his father remain in pain for any longer than was necessary. Nadran was also secretly terrified that something would happen that would make the injuries even worse, so that the herbs he was hoping to find would no longer be sufficient. The sun had already set over the horizon, and yet he didn't feel tired yet as he tried to hurry and find an herb that met his requirements.
[I can't believe that some stuck-up noble would run over my father with his carriage for 'not getting out of the way fast enough…' No, actually, I can easily believe a noble would do that. That doesn't mean I'll forgive them, though…] Nadran thought, trying to reign in the rage at this noble who had almost killed his father for their own twisted amusement. [Revenge can wait until later, I need to save dad first. Besides, I currently don't have the strength to make him pay. I can only hope I can grow strong enough to fight him soon.]
Hours passed as he looked through the list, trying to calm his heart and focus on his task, but it seemed it would never end. All of the herbs were either unable to help his father, were clearly far too rare for him to find, or both at the same time. While Nadran was looking through the book as fast as he possibly could, he could tell that he was less than 1% of the way through the book even after such a long time. [At this rate, it'll be months by the time I'm finished looking through these,] he lamented, despair beginning to creep into his mind. But then, an idea suddenly occurred to him, causing Nadran to stiffen and almost drop the book.
[What if I tried to use a sigil to search through the book for a fitting herb? I just found out earlier today that sigils can be broken up into separate parts, so maybe I can learn to use one of the searching sigils I copied down from the lectures. But if this doesn't work, I could spend hours doing something that doesn't work… hours that I don't think I have the freedom to waste right now.] Nadran pursed his lips as he pondered whether it was worth the risk before sighing and muttering "Well, it's not like continuing to search manually like this is likely to succeed." He used the storage sigil to retrieve his folder of sigil designs. He quickly found a number of sigils he thought could help, then compared them to see what shared properties they had. [It looks like this part near the center is the part that causes the sigil to scan its surroundings, and… ah, this swirl-shaped pattern probably indicates using the air as a medium for the scan. This sigil is used to search for objects inside lakes, so… this symbol indicates water being used as a medium.]
Nadran found it surprisingly easy to figure out what different parts of the sigil did; all he needed to do was to was find which sigils shared a certain symbol, then figure out what the sigils had in common. In this way, Nadran was able to figure out the sigil that would help him most. He didn't have any sigils recorded that were specifically designed to scan words on a page; most of them were used to detect danger or treasure in their surroundings. However, one of them had all of the attributes that he would expect from a sigil that could search for certain words. It was actually designed to scan runic traps in order to find the method to disarm them. It seemed that it did this by looking for certain runes within the trap that acted as the source of the trap's energy, the destruction of which would disable the trap's mechanisms.
Nadran studied the sigil diagram, trying to memorize the pattern. Drawing sigils required a large amount of concentration, and it was nearly impossible to create a sigil if you had to constantly be looking at the diagram to figure out what to do next. Because of this, even with the diagram in front of him, Nadran needed to memorize it first before he could use it. Nadran was prepared for this process to take another several hours at bare minimum, and he was in fact hoping for it to be that fast. Previous sigils of this complexity had taken him several months to memorize, but Nadran did not have the time for that, and so he only hoped he could be lucky enough to memorize it quickly.
To Nadran's surprise, the process went smoother than he could ever have hoped for. Now that he could identify the different sections of the sigil and what they did, he was able to easily draw those parts. The only difficulty came in the areas he did not recognize; he wasn't sure what the purpose of certain sections were, as he couldn't find anything that looked the same in the other sigils. [Maybe these parts have some other meaning that I don't understand,] Nadran contemplated. Although these unidentified sections took up the majority of the sigil, he was able to use the parts he did recognize as reference points, and within half an hour, he was able to successfully make the full sigil.
[Incredible,] Nadran thought in shock. [I was able to learn it so quick. It's almost as if my previous inability to learn sigils was a lie.] Shaking his head to rid it of unnecessary thoughts, Nadran used his internal energy to activate the search function of the sigil. Internal energy was the power source that allowed cultivators to create and use sigils, and the amount of energy used was proportional to the power and complexity of the sigil. Thankfully, the sigil Nadran was working with was just a mid slate sigil, and so Nadran was able to attempt the sigil six times over the course of half an hour, operate the sigil once it was successfully created, and still have a bit of internal energy left over.
The sigil set to work quickly as Nadran used his internal energy to inscribe the words he was looking for onto the sigil. These words acted as the parameters for which the sigil searched. Nadran flipped through the pages of the book, and the sigil scanned each one. When the sigil found all of the specified words on a single page, it caused glowing auras of light to appear around them, and Nadran stopped to look at the plant that the words were referring to. If it didn't seem feasible for him to acquire the plant, he moved on. In this way, Nadran was able to look through almost the entire book in just over an hour.
Nadran got increasingly frustrated as he got farther and farther into the book without finding anything that he could potentially get his hands on. When he reached the halfway point, Nadran started to wonder if there was anything in this book that would work. Soon, he was on the last dozen or so pages of the book and still hadn't found anything good, and he was beginning to lose hope.
It was at this point that a certain plant caught his eye, and Nadran stopped to examine it. This flower was deep red in color with a stem that was as white as bone. Above the picture, the words 'Lesser Blood Lily' were written in a neat font. Looking at the glowing words that were in the description, Nadran began reading, muttering aloud to himself.
"Let's see… looks like it can heal even extremely deep wounds, both internal and external, while both mending broken bones and increasing the bones' strength. It can typically be found… near the nests of crimson hawks."
Nadran suddenly thought of a reddish nest he had once seen high up on a cliff. Since crimson hawks are extremely aggressive creatures, his family had stayed well away from that cliff face when they were collecting herbs.
[Could there be a Lesser Blood Lily there?] Nadran wondered, shivering in a mixture of excitement and fear. [Crimson hawks are really dangerous, though… no, no, I need to go there. I don't have any other options if I want to help heal Dad.]
Nadran took a deep breath, being sure to memorize the flower's appearance before hurrying out of the library. Ignoring the pain and fatigue that had slowly been building up in his body, he hurried toward the Pyratha cliffs, the twinkling stars the only thing lighting his way.