A few days later, Via finds Emily discussing designs with a group of war weavers in a tented forge.

  “Emily,” the Lebard mage calls out as she steps into the intense dry heat of the crafting space. “Are you ready?”

  “One moment,” Emily calls back, not turning her eyes away from the war weaver squeezing two tense bow-limbs together and binding them with a thin, semi-translucent cord.

  He hands it to her the moment it’s finished, and everybody in the tent watches with an intensity that shocks Via as the Technomancer turns the weapon over in her hands, inspecting every inch of its form. She holds the body out with her right hand and tests the draw with her left, pulling her metal arm back with seemingly no resistance.

  Mutters of surprise spread through the weavers watching, and Emily relaxes the weighty draw before passing the bow back to its maker.

  “Your technique is impressively refined, and this is the greatest bow I’ve ever held, but it’s still a little too light,” she says, patting the man’s shoulder before turning to follow Via out.

  This settles it, though: I’ve been neglecting material science so far. I should do some experimentation on polymers when I return to Modo.

  “Are we staying within the Exchange’s borders?” she asks as they step out into the midday sun.

  “No.” Via shakes her head. “We’re going to head southwest to Health Spring, a settlement I run on the border of the volcanic region. It’s where we treat most of our most severe injuries, notably those of the mind, and where I’m currently growing one of our largest batches of salvianross.”

  “Can we take Elisime?”

  “Of course, I’m looking forward to seeing inside the monster that’s been looming over us since you arrived. I’ve never been inside a sky ship before.”

  After boarding Elisime, Emily gives a short tour while they fly southwest, and within a few hours, they arrive above a sprawling collection of wooden huts bordering several dazzling fields of violet flowers. There are wooden fences surrounding the crops, carved with runes and hung with charms carved from beast bones, and the ship’s sensors detect movement hidden within the fields along with the armed guards patrolling the edge of the fences.

  “Whoa,” Pod mutters in awe as he stares down at the sea of purple below.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Via beams with pride. “I’m currently growing a total of thirty-six different breeds of salvianross at this location.”

  “Thirty-six breeds? All requiring the same conditions, or?” Emily asks as she directs the ship to come to a halt above the buildings.

  “No. The fields are split into several environmentally controlled segments. This site focuses mostly on breeds that require high temperatures and even sunlight, leveraging the high ambient fire mana from the nearby mountains.” Via nods towards the dark forms looming on the horizon, distorting the skyline with heat and ash. “It’s why the majority of my experimental breeds are here. Salvianross reacts most to temperature changes in its maturation process.”

  She continues explaining her breeding experiments and follows Emily and her children out of the ship as Pod stays back to tinker in the workshop, and Virgil and Dante excuse themselves to retire to their rooms.

  Via leads them down to the ground and into the fields. They pass through an invisible film, and immediately Emily feels the temperature and humidity rise against her skin. She compares the tall plants they walk past to the diagrams in the books she once read and the memory of the sample flower she used up, noting how most of the stalks and leaves near her bear a spotted yellow pattern that was absent on both.

  Before she can ask about it, though, her attention is stolen by a small green body pushing itself out from a row of plants a few metres in front of them, holding a small sickle with a woven basket strapped to its back, filled with plant clippings.

  “A goblin?” she questions aloud, inspecting the little humanoid creature’s surprisingly well-looked-after cloth overalls.

  “Yes, we have an agreement with one of the green thumbed tribes nearby,” Via nods, waving politely to the short worker and receiving a startled nod and grunt in response before he scurries off into the crops to continue his work. “They’re not very social, but they enjoy working on the land. They help tend to my crops in return for high-quality clothing, tools, and food.”

  “Helpful,” Emily muses, watching the little creature inspecting and trimming down a plant through her magical senses. “I’d love to get a chance to talk to some goblins while I’m here.”

  “Maybe another tribe. You’ll find more hope to that end in the north…”

  ***

  In a small room within a series of complex tunnels buried beneath the lush fields of salvianross, Emily stands by the door leaning back against one of the hardwood beams supporting the ceiling, watching Via speaking gently to the room’s inhabitant about their symptoms.

  “…but the terrors still persist?”

  “Yes,” responds the man with sallow skin stretched thin over his sunken cheeks, nodding his head weakly. “Your draught was to no avail. Every night I still see them…”

  He trails off, and his gaze drifts, his eyes glassing over with an absent expression.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Via turns her head to face Emily, the lingering sadness in her gaze quickly fading.

  “An unfortunately perfect example of a subject who no longer benefits from a gentle approach,” she says, reaching into her storage pouch and producing a sealed pot along with a rune-engraved metal rod with a fire crystal embedded in the base of the handle. “I shall now move up from attempted soothing, through prolonged weak exposure, to forced closure. I loathe to use this method on most patients, but, well, some warrant it. I bid you observe this process closely if you’re considering using the plant for anything similar on yourself: it is not a pleasant experience.”

  Via cracks open the jar, revealing a thick, honey-like translucent gel swirling with colours. She scoops a small dollop out with the end of the rod in her other hand, before holding the implement beneath the dazed patient’s nose.

  Emily pushes off the wall and approaches as a pulse of mana sinks into the metal. The rod flares orange, heating the end in an instant, and the gel clinging to the end boils into vapour before, with a gentle mana-charged breath, it’s blown straight into the patient’s lungs.

  Emily places a hand on his shoulder, flooding him with machina and using it to watch as the powerful magical agent spreads through his undefended mortal body, taking hold of him in an instant and setting his brain alight with a flood of activity.

  “This would be easier if my son could watch…” she mutters, trying to understand the rush of signals.

  “His presence is too malicious. I’m sorry, but I draw the line at anything that could affect my patients’ treatment.”

  The man’s body tenses and his vacant eyes gloss over, so Emily gently pushes him down to lie flat, watching his lips tremble and trip through incoherent mumbles.

  “How long will it last?” she asks as the patient’s internal temperature slowly ticks up beneath her fingertips and sweat seeps from his brow.

  “It varies wildly on a case-by-case basis, but a single dose will usually release its hold after ten minutes,” Via responds, conjuring a light breeze to cool the patient down and wick away the moisture clinging to him. “How long he will experience is another question entirely, though.”

  “I could’ve guessed,” Emily mutters, copying scan after scan of the man’s hyperactive brain into her notes. “With how chaotic his mind is, it’s a wonder he’ll remember anything.”

  “Oh? What’s it like? I don’t have any spells that allow a clear view of the mind and its function, only a few that can judge its health.”

  “For good reason. It’s a horribly complex organ to unpick. My machina helps a lot in that regard, since as long as I can run it through a person without resistance, I can easily map the path it travelled to understand their internal structure. However, for this I’m actually flooding his system and locating every point I hit resistance, such as the bio-electrical signals firing in his mind, before comparing them to his body in a relaxed state.”

  “That’s an incredible level of attention to detail, tracking so many signals at once,” Via says with a hint of admiration in her tone. “Would you be able to reproduce an image of what you’re seeing to help my understanding of the mind?”

  “Of course.” Emily nods and waves her free hand, splitting a small sliver of her cortex’s processing power away from analysing salvianross’ effects and designing a potion to target her own mental issue.

  She weaves metal and lightning together in a glowing, silvery orb before letting the latter arc out, tracing the same path as a strand of her machina within the patient’s head. A trail of metal is burned into the air in the lightning’s wake, leaving a thin strand standing on its own, stretching up from the glowing spell.

  A second tongue of plasma flicks out, curling around the thin standing wire and leaving a second strand of metal that deviates to the left halfway up. A third and fourth tongue of charge spread wires to the right, but the fifth runs up the first wire, following the same winding path before fracturing a few inches from the end and tracing a curling down, beginning to form a recognisable outline.

  Via watches enraptured as spark after spark flies, drawing out the complex folds and grooves of the patient’s brain while filling it with the hum of activity in real time. Her mouth hangs open, and she only just manages to regain herself when the patient begins convulsing violently a few minutes from the end of his treatment.

  The practised Lebard medic immediately jumps forward upon seeing his distress, letting out a burst of raw mana that forms into translucent limbs of distorted wind and wrapping them around the patient.

  “Is this normal?” Emily asks.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Nothing, it just seems your observation of vapourised salvianross trapping one within their mind is even more literal than I expected.”

  “How so?” Via enquires while meeting Emily’s gaze, the concern in her eyes quickly being overtaken by curiosity.

  “Well, what do you notice about this connection here?” Emily asks, pointing to the brainstem of her floating metal example.

  “Nothing at a gla-” Via squints, cutting herself off and leaning in closer to observe the flickering charge dancing across the metal surface. “It almost looks like one signal is passing across, but it’s not. There’s a slight interval between activity above and below. And… are there multiple signals meeting at once?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the source of the issue, only a symptom. The signals within the brain are being blocked, bouncing back instead of passing through. It’s the same with those outside, though, as you noticed, they’re getting mixed up before they’re reflected back, leading to this uncontrolled seizing.”

  “Can you tell why it happens towards the end of the process? The shakes are one of the least understood side effects of the plant.”

  “As far as I can tell, it’s just the main effect spreading,” Emily muses, splitting apart her floating model and drawing Via’s attention to a focused cluster within, letting her watch hundreds of signals firing before petering out without meeting an appropriate receiver. “The plant appears to interfere with the reception of a lot of signals, and I suspect the seizing only starts once that effect has spread to the entire brain.”

  “Maybe we could further localise the effects?” Via mutters, immediately beginning to look for solutions. “If I ask the First Wing for one of her clansmen well-versed in mental manipulation, they may have a spell to help target the mind alone… Maybe I could try adding the blood of a headworm…”

  “You’d be better off simply giving them a small dose of oberin venom before the salvianross,” Emily interrupts. “It’s non-magical, so you’ll need to strengthen it for any of your awakened patients, but it’ll paralyse their muscles completely for twenty minutes. It shouldn’t interfere with the healing in any way.”

  “Yes, that would be perfect, but I’d only have enough venom for my next few patients. Oberin aren’t common in our waters.”

  “I can help with that if you would like. They’re plentiful in the waters just off my factory in New Denntimo: I can bring you some to keep, or provide a steady supply of venom if that’s preferable.”

  “And they’ll have no issues with you fishing in their waters?” Via questions with a raised brow.

  “I have trade agreements in place with their Council and permission to gather resources within a reasonable distance of my property. They won’t argue over a few fish.”

  The patient’s convulsions suddenly stop, and his eyes snap wide open, filled with shocking clarity.

  “I… would like to be alone now,” he says quietly, his voice coming out as a hoarse croak.

  “Of course,” Via says, immediately releasing the binds holding him fast and gesturing with her head for Emily to follow her out.

  “That was… sudden,” Emily says the moment the door to the man’s room swings shut behind them.

  “The endings of such episodes usually are. While it won’t be clear what the patient experienced until he’s prepared to tell us, which, as is often the case, he may never be; it won’t have been pleasant. Being forced to face your demons never is.”

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