Chapter Text
The sun beats down with all its’ fury today, gods I hate summer, the sunburns, bugs that pick relentlessly at your skin, never enough water, and any patches of shade already occupied by some noble brat; but it’s better than the unrelenting cold of winter, the hunger and biting wind. Gill died last winter, froze to death in his alley.
“Hey, you!” I don’t even pause, pretend it’s not you they’re shouting at, ignore, ignore, ignore; blend in with the crowd and live another day. It works most of the time, but when it doesn’t, well, I’m a fast runner.
A hand clamps down on my shoulder and I stiffen, slowly turning to look at the brat with the audacity to grab me, the pest flinches before tightening his hold.
“You, you’re that healer aren’t you?” He stares at me with a kind of desperate fervor, “Please, it’s my sister, she’s dying.”
Perhaps rolling my eyes isn’t the best response to this situation; however, this brat is getting on my nerves.
“Aren’t we all? What’s made you so desperate to save this girl that you would come to me? I’m just a street rat after all,” I tilt my head to the side in curiosity.
“You may be a street rat now, but you walk and talk like a noble.” I scoff.
“Observation is a poor substitute for an actual instructor and a lifetime of training,” The brat insists.
“Aish, you sure don’t give up, do you?”
Of course this little brat wouldn't give up, it's common in nobility to force some poor unlucky soul to do your bidding, why would this pampered brat be any different?
"Please," he starts again, "my sister is dying."
I'm so close to punching this pest's lights out, one punch, that's all it would take, he may have a quality sword on his hip but I wouldn't bet money on him actually being able to use it, much less use it well. Most of the nobility are all pomp and circumstance.
"What's your sister's name?" I sigh, rolling my eyes when the pest lights up.
"Elena, her name is Elena, and I'm Finch." I pause, and odd name for a noble, just then a finch flies by and it clicks, he obviously saw the bird too and pulled a name out of his ass.
"Alright Finch," I stress his 'name' to make it clear I know, " bring me to your sister."
***
I was expecting a merchants house or maybe a nobleman's manor, not the fucking royal palace! Now I'm absolutely sure the brat lied when he gave me his name, after all, what noble names their child 'Finch'?
"Follow me." The brat seems more somber now as he leads me confidently through the halls of the royal palace, taking staircases with a grace and assurance that mere servants just didn't possess, so this guy was either a noble close to the royal family, a knight, or, and this was the worst case, a member of the royal family himself.
If this was the case then his identity was easy to ascertain, after all the royal family only had one son despite trying desperately for more heirs, unfortunately for them, the only other child had been the princess, and as a female in Alseja she stood no chance to inherit the throne, her only use to her family was to be married to a neighboring county's prince for an alliance. The royal family was paranoid and concealed the names of their members as well as their appearances, portraits were strictly forbidden, any sketch with charcoal and paper was swiftly burned and it's maker relived of their position in the castle as well as their head. The prince's voice jolted me out of my thoughts,
"Here we are then," so saying he pushed open a pair of double doors and the smell of herbs and medicine as well as sickness wafted out to slap me across the face. It seemed the prince had told the truth then, the princess was sick, and when the royal doctor was unable to cure her, the prince had gotten desperate enough to go looking for other options, even if it brought him to the streets.
I step through into the room and take in the sight of the royal infirmary, it's not what I was expecting, at all. The beds look as though they've come from a battle field, some have blood stains and others are torn and ripped as though some maniac had taken a butcher's knife to them. And oddest of all was the chains attached to some of the wooden bedposts, chains that had been pulled with enough force to shatter the wood. Chillingly, there were scratches in the stone floor, as though someone... or, something had dug it's claws there.
"Why am I here princeling," I whisper, staring at the marks in the stone floor, before lifting my head and noticing the distinct lack of windows, the infirmary only lit by torches.
"About five months ago my sister went to a neighboring city to visit a close friend, while she was there her guard was infiltrated and a curse was cast on my sister. At first the nature of the curse didn't seem to be that significant, it seemed that the only effect was a mild pain in her joints, concerning enough but easily treated. However as the days went by the curse grew in it's effects, becoming more and more of a, shall we say, problem. It was not until a month had passed since she had been cursed and we had found no cure that the full extent of the curse revealed itself. That night my sister, my kind gentle sister, was turned into a beast. That night death visited the infirmary and the beast that was once my sister slaughtered all she could reach, sparing none. Of course the curse didn't stop there, my sister was trapped in the form of the beast even as her mind returned, but every night since the first she loses herself and the beast takes over, it shatters shackles, breaks wood of any thickness or strength and slaughters to its content and only when the sunrises is my sister freed from the grip of the beast." Fists clenched at his sides the prince turns to face me. "This is why you have been summoned, the royal doctor and all our sorcerers have found no solution to this curse and been able to return my sister to her own body and so I spent the last months scouring the kingdom for someone who could, but the solution was right in front of my nose this whole time, I finally caught wind of rumors about a young maiden who could cure the most impossible illnesses and lift the most stubborn of curses; but I couldn't find you until I saw you in the market and here we are."
A shiver runs up my spine and I look at the chains, noticing the shattered cuffs for the first time, the beds with the shackles had no blood I realized, only the ones without, how many times had they tried and risked the patients that were sharing the room with the princess? How many people had died before they tried a different tactic, or, were they still trying? Where was the princess now? Where had they hidden her while this was happening? Where did she go during the day? What curse had been cast? There were few curses capable of turning someone of such lineage as the princess into a common beast but the ones I could think of were... difficult, to reverse and almost always rebounded on the one who freed the afflicted, surely this was the reason the princess had not been cured yet? The royal sorcerers must have known and tried to find a more stable reversal, their case was not a matter of unable, but rather, it was a matter of unwilling. For if they had reversed the curse on the princess only to become cursed themselves they would be forfeit their lives. of course it was a matter of such selfishness, but I had to admit a certain unwillingness to have such a curse inflicted upon myself but I held no allegiance to the crown and so was free to seek out other methods of curse reversal, it was only my own conscience that insisted on a speedy solution to save lives, however, if I received the curse upon myself then I would be incapable of further medical practice and people on the streets and in the city as a whole would suffer the more for it, especially so if I went on a killing spree every night.
"Very well princeling, I will treat your sister." It wasn't like I had any choice really, the royal family was as vindictive as they were said to be kind, treating one family well only to turn around and bite the heads off another. I had no plans of becoming the next example to the people of the royal family's might.
"Wonderful, I shall lead you to her then," The prince then turned on his heels and left the infirmary with me following behind him. I was lead up yet more flights of stairs and through winding hallways before we came to a stop before a heavy metal door, behind which I could hear the chuffing greeting of some kind of big cat.
"Sister, I have brought a doctor to see to you, may we come in?"
There's a heavy moment of silence before a noise that sounds very much like reluctant agreement is uttered and the prince pulls a key out of his pocket and unlocks the door, turning the handle he pushes the door inward and I catch my first glimpse of the princess, my first immediate thought is 'By all the gods, she's huge!' quickly followed by 'oh but she's gorgeous, look at the fur!'
And indeed the princess is by and far the largest cat I have ever seen in my life, the tips of her ears look as though they would come up to my short ribs, her pitch fur contrasts starkly against her golden eyes, eyes that have rounded pupils oddly, not like the cats I often see in alleyways. Eyes that are squarely focused on me I note, waiting for something, belatedly I give a reluctant bow.
"My greetings your highness, my name is Relie, the prince has asked me to treat your affliction." A spark of amusement lights the princess' gaze as though to say 'is that what we're calling it now?'
I have the feeling that were the princess currently in her natural form she and I would get along swimmingly.
"Truthfully your highness, there are a limited number of curses that this could be, to be able to curse one of your lineage is truly not an insignificant feat, even more so, to do so so thoroughly. Why if I was to make a wager I would say that any other bloodline would be compulsively murdering rats in the grainery." It was a well known secret in Alseja, that the royal family were the descendants of some sort of heavenly being, granting them long lives and unimaginable power, thus putting them above the common folk, there were some who even speculated that dragons were the ones to make up the good majority of the royal family's blood and that their descendants still retained the ability to take the form of their ancestors. But surely that couldn't be the case, dragons had been hunted to extinction generations ago, no one had seen a dragon in over a thousand years. While people with powerful and magical heritage were of no shortage in Alseja, myself being one of them, in the days long past the dragons were never known for being ones to mingle, much less sire brood with humans, surely not. But, the princess' golden eyes... no, they were merely a product of her transformation, after all the prince had perfectly normal brown eyes.
"How do you mean?" The princes' comment pulls me from my thoughts and I look up to meet his gaze.
"Exactly that, any lesser bloodline would be completely transformed, most likely to the extent that they would be no more than a mere alley cat."
"Then let us thank the gods that it was not a lesser bloodline and simply my sister who is now compelled to murder innocent people every night." It's said so viscously that it takes me a moment to identify the sarcasm.
"I apologize, that is not what I meant, I merely meant that if your highness' bloodline were any lesser, than your sister could have been completely lost with no chance of returning to herself. In fact I believe this tells us something about the caster, they must have been exceedingly powerful to affect one such as your sister to the extent that they have." I cup my chin in my hand and lean on it, this was strange, very strange; not someone targeting the princess, no, people targeted the royal family and other nobles all the time, but if you were going to curse someone, why send someone you weren't sure could do the job? Even more so if you were going to target the most powerful family in the country, it simply made no sense.
"Your highness, do you mind if I touch your head momentarily? I need to get a feel for the magic to identify the curse and any potential spells to lift it." The princess nods her large head in a way that is somehow graceful even when trapped in the form of a large cat. I reach out and rest my hand gently on what would be the princess' forehead and send a trendil of my magic out to feel for the curse only to jolt back sharply, clutching my hand and exclaiming in pain.
"What was that!" The prince questions.
"It felt like my hand was struck by lightning," I murmur stretching my hand out and feeling for any damage, there was none. Interesting.