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Legundo lights a candle and sits at his desk, recording the ratios of ingredients he’d tried for the latest batch of cure attempts (9 tries ending in failure, meaning he’d wasted 27 glass in a place where it’s such a precious resource). The doctor had earned his title, even if he wouldn’t go so far as to say he deserves it. He’d been as obedient in his studies as he’d been in his service; as compliant while learning how to stitch broken bodies back together as he’d been while tipping poison into the well to tear them apart.
He’d liked mathematics during his studies, too. No matter what else was happening, he had always been able to figure out that if a2 + b2 = c2 and a = 3 and b = 4, then c must equal 5. He’d always been able to discern differentials by finding the limit of f’(x) = f(x+h) - f(x) over h as h approaches 0.
Let x be the amount of people he’d patched up just enough to be sent off to die, let y be the amount of people in the town he’d poisoned, and calculate b, equaling the amount of blood on his hands, the amount of times he’s broken his vows, and he doesn’t even know where to start. x + y = b. A simple equation, and a simple answer he doesn’t want to think about.
Legundo has to focus. The candle giving him light to work by won’t burn forever, and there are people out there, in both the town and the castle, who need him to figure out a cure. He has patients to save now, people whom he needs to prevent ever becoming numbers in his bloody equation.
His eyes burn with exhaustion. He must have been awake for over a day, now (1 day = 24 hours = 1440 minutes). He has to offer some good gift to the world before he dies, has to find some way to show his penitence and regret. It won’t bring anyone he killed back to life, though. He can’t just let z be the patients he’s saved and start claiming his record is x + y - z. His vision can’t quite seem to bring the list of ingredients in front of him into focus. Even just the tiniest bit of progress on a cure, some glimmer of hope, and he could at least close his eyes for a minute, just long enough to clear his vision and adjust the monocle over his real eye…
The candle is burnt down to the wick when he wakes from his involuntary doze. It should have burned for at least another half hour (½ hour = 30 minutes = 1800 seconds), which means he’s wasted that much time he could have been using to try and help. Blearily, he stands, his joints aching in protest from the awkward position he’d been hunched in as he makes his way to the brewing stand to try out another combination.
He ignores the pull of sleep as he runs through the forest looking for books and answers with some of the others, but he can’t forget the next batch of cure attempts waiting to be tested. He’s almost certain they’ll be just as ineffective as the others—after all, he only has 2 of the 3 books he needs (2 out of 3 = ⅔ = 0.66 repeating)—but his thoughts stray to Owen anyway. Legundo slips away from the group and goes to the lake, placing a chest and a sign on the ground.
"A gift," Legundo writes, taking care to keep the letters neat. "I want to help." He places a cure attempt in the chest, along with as much raw meat as he could find. If he can help 1 person (1 person, 1 singular person), then maybe… Legundo doesn’t even know how his thought ends. x + y = b.