CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Goddess

DAKU

"He'll wake up before you know it," said the Sage upon noticing my worried look. Kenshi lay unconscious on the bed the Sage had offered. It was the only bed present inside his abode.

"Thank you, Sage—"

"Greygor," he muttered. "You can call me, Greygor. I don't like being called Sage when I'm just an old-man who happened to be good at magic."

"Yet you still let them call you," I pointed out.

"This village requires a leader and for some reason, they picked me as one. And that's when they started calling me Sage. I've already told them to quit calling me that name but they seemed to forget about it."

The Sage, I meant Greygor, went to the kitchen while I watched. Greygor was your typical old mage and his house matched his persona — a shelve full of books, a tapestry made of wolf fur, a dining table adorned with plate-full of fruits of sorts, and a fireplace containing red blazing hot coals that shot embers every now and then.

Others might think he was a hunter of some sort because of the wolf fur that decorated the walls and even the floor but the shelve of books would antagonize the idea. For me, he was a scary old man who liked to read books and hunt for wolves as a hobby.

Curious about what the books were, I approached one of the shelves and scanned through the spines of all the books perfectly placed in here. Turned out, these were grimoires of the magic of different disciplines.

"You seemed to like magic, do you?" I asked, briefly stopping Greygor from doing what he was doing, probably, preparing some food to eat.

"I research magic," Greygor corrected. "We humans are constantly learning."

"What kind of magic are you researching?"

"Anything that has never been discovered before."

"You mean to make new magic?"

"You could say that." Greygor started cooking after I heard the noise of a crackling oil. Whatever he was cooking, I was sure it would be delicious. The smell made sure of that. "So, tell me. What brings you two here to our village?"

"Now that you mentioned it, do you happen to know someone who can help me with my healing magic?" My eyes caught how Greygor made a full stop on what he was doing, a sign that he was intrigued about what I just said. His back was against me so I couldn't tell if he was pleasantly intrigued or the other way around.

Greygor tried to hide his interest by continuing his task. "Healing Magic, you say? I don't hear that every day. What made you think I have a knowledge of such magic?"

My eyes trailed back to the unconscious Kenshi. "His lead told us that someone from here knows a thing about Healing Magic. We are hoping that certain someone could lend us a hand in training me as a Healer."

"I know a thing about Healing Magic," Greygor claimed as he spun around to look in my direction. Is he implying that he was the one we are looking for? "But I can't teach Healing Magic more than her."

My brows met and my forehead creased. "Her?"

"The Goddess of Health," he introduced. "She resides near here. She's the one responsible for everyone's health status here. Ever since we have her, no one in the village felt sick again."

"Are you saying that this Goddess could take an apprentice?"

Greygor returned to cooking, intensifying, once again, the noise of whatever he was cooking. A scraping metal ricocheted on the walls as Greygor stirred the contents of the pan.

"That's something that I'm not quiet sure about." Greygor reached to the nearby plate and poured the food onto it. With his back blocking my view, I still had no idea what the food was. Finally, he pivoted to face me while holding the plate containing the food. "But will you give it a try?"

The food was unfamiliar to me but I was pretty sure it would be worth tasting. The aroma it gave off activated the glands within my mouth — I'm salivating.

The question almost escaped from my mind as I was distracted by the food. Thankfully, I managed to refocus my head on the topic. However, I would be more grateful if the question trailed off for good because I failed to come up with an answer.

I really wanted to become a better Healer. So much better that I didn't have to worry about anything. But parts of me were also saying that becoming a full-blown Healer would mean accepting humiliation from idiotic and close-minded people. The latter was something that I could handle for a short period of time but to live the rest of my life on such discrimination, I didn't think so.

And then my eyes caught on Kenshi. The very person who made me realize that becoming a Healer was not a bad thing after all and that I could be someone others could rely on. But that was not enough for me to decide. I needed a bigger reason.

The dream.

I remembered the dream I had before. The one where smoke and blood decorated the plane while lifeless and disheveled bodies that were beyond saving resembled boulders or rocks because of how dirtied and muddied they had become.

A premonition or not, a battle was possible. A war that would shake the very foundation of peace and harmony in this kingdom. And before everyone knew it, everything would be long gone and no one could save them.

I glanced back at Greygor who was actually patiently waiting for my response. His blank expression was tainted by a hint of a smirk.

"Where can I meet her?"

"You're asking the wrong question, lad. You have already met her. The real question is, when are you going to meet her again?" Greygor corrected, furrowing my brows even more. Greygor heaved a heavy sigh as a sign of defeat when his hints failed.

The old man walked toward the shelf next to the one I scanned through earlier and grabbed a book. He flipped through several pages while tracing back his steps. Finally, Greygor stopped before me and handed me the book. The page's title read: The Goddess of Health. I received the book and read it.

The book contained a detailed description of the Goddess mostly using exaggerated words of praise and compliments just to amuse the divine. Several illustrated pictures were drawn as well along with additional must-to-know notes written in red ink — a symbol of emphasis.

But among the contents handfully written and drawn here, there was this particular image that caught not just my attention but also my curiosity. It was a doe, and a very familiar one. Although all doe looked the same, especially when drawn or depicted in images, my gut told me that this particular doe was the same as the doe that I healed and saved us from the bandits.

"Your face is amusing to look at," Greygor mentioned, halting me of my thoughts. "Yes, the doe that saved you earlier was the Goddess of Health in disguise." The revelation came as nothing more than subtle news. My hunches made the revelation less surprising.

"Is it common for her to act that way? Like, help humans? Aren't the Gods and Goddesses prefer to distance themselves from mankind?"

Greygor grabbed two clean plates and spoons and placed them on the table where the food he just cooked and was reeking of delicious aroma awaited.

"Thelah, her name, is fond of living beings and we just so happened to be living beings as well. Her blessings only work on living things. It was her duty as a divine to answer the pleas and cries of mankind suffering from illnesses. Only then her job as a Goddess of Health can be fulfilled."

Greygor last statement struck a similarity within me. As a Healer, we need a person who was suffering a health issue before we could be of any help. It was the saddest truth that we had to see people's anguish before our eyes before our ability could be put to purpose.

"I can relate to that," I confessed. "That's why I'm also searching for a way for me to be useful in fights and battles and not just healing those at the frontlines and watch them fight for us."

"You know, you're not the first one to say that, and for the record, he was a Healer, too," the old man said, triggering my curiosity again. Who is he referring to? "But let me tell you this, that ambition of yours is the opposite of who you are really meant to be. You're supposed to heal people, relieve them of their pain, not inflict pain on them. It goes against your purpose," Greygor lectured, igniting a spark of annoyance within me. If there was one thing that annoyed me, that was when someone told me what to do and what was the best for me.

But this was different. Normally, I would burst out defending myself while my nose and my ears fumed out of anger but not today. Not this time. Because I understood what Greygor was trying to say. But that didn't mean that it was the best for me. I knew for myself what was the best for me and that was to learn not just to heal but to fight as well.

"I know that look, lad. You are thinking of asking the Goddess for a way to fight," Greygor guessed and he was right. His expression shifted into serious mode while staring at me. His eyes fixed on me like a target for his magic. "I must warn you. Someone already asked the Goddess of such a thing and it only brought chaos to this world. For the sake of the serenity of the kingdom, lad, do not use the Goddess's goodness for your own benefit."

"What do you mean by "goodness"?"

"Thelah is the kindest Goddess of all. A simple request from a human can be fulfilled without effort. The same thing happened when her apprentice asked her of a forbidden magic. She was convinced that the boy would stick to his promise of using the magic only when needed but turned out, the boy abused it and became one of the harbingers of the God of Darkness," Greygor narrated. I was taken aback by his last statement. Now I truly understood.

"How did you know all of this?" I asked. He knew too much about the Goddess more than anyone in this world.

Greygor evaded his eyes away from mine and looked down on his feet. The once overwhelming authority and warning earlier were replaced by a melancholic atmosphere of sorrow and regret. I watched as his hand turned into a fist, unsure of whether it was out of anger or grief.

"He was once an apprentice of mine. I treated him as my grandson. He was a lovely young man before he awakened to be a Healer just like you. He yearned to become like me — a mage. He even had a grimoire of himself full of new spells and magic waiting to be tested. But that ambition of him shattered like a thin sheet of snow under a 100-pound weight load.

"He was depressed. Deeply depressed. Until one day, he saw a wounded doe outside in the middle of the night. For the first time, he used healing magic, even though he already promised himself that he would not use healing magic. The very same night, the doe revealed herself as the Goddess of Health and wanted to make my apprentice her student.

"He accepted it without hesitation. He learned healing magic that only Healers can conjure. He was determined to learn until he asked for a forbidden dark magic. A magic that antagonizes healing magic. He called it Rupture Magic. That was when he fell into the hands of the God of Darkness.

"Afraid of his magic, I exiled him out of this house, and Thelah, no longer acknowledges him as her student. He became so dark that the Goddess goodness became a defensive mechanism."

"Do you mind if I ask who he is?"

Greygor shook his head. "His old name was Ren," Greygor once again looked at me. "But now, he's known as Hirako, the Dark Healer."