That which doesn’t kill you might leave you crippled mentally, ruined behaviorally, and permanently scarred physically. Any Pathbearer stupid enough to think that surviving in and of itself is strengthening has not been adequately traumatized.

You can recover and surpass who you were before a severe injury or a mental wound, but it takes an act of significant reinforcement. You have to work to rebuild yourself. And that is my greatest complaint about our medical system thus far.

Too often do we, as Biomancers, fill in the gaps where the body has suffered a lack. We relink broken bones, we restore missing skin, we pour flesh into gaping wounds, and then we send our patients on their way. But what of their minds? What of their damaged psyches?

I understand that Psychomancy is an extremely dangerous lure. I am fully aware of the dangers it presents to a whole and cohesive public. However, we are letting a great opportunity slip by us—the opportunity to rebuild the minds of our traumatized heroes. We don’t need to use Psychomancy as a thing of vile, corruptive influence, but rather a palliative measure as well.

I put forth my proposal to open a new field of study, a study of psycho-positivity, to see not only the physically crippled restored to function, but also the mentally harmed to returned to wholeness.

As healers, we’ve already sworn to take on the burdens of our patients, so I say let us do it completely. Let us make sure they’re fully healed, rather than only halfway mended.

-Hero-Biomancer Javelina Van Erren

225 (I)

First-Aid

Hector Boulevard: You were barely gone for more than a few minutes. What the hells, Shiv?

Adam’s message had been repeated for a third time, and Shiv bit back a sigh. He was about to reply when his current patient doubled over and heaved.

There was nothing coming out of her by this point. Still, her body shook and spasmed. He pulled her hair back to make sure that she wouldn’t get any sour spittle in its strands. He didn’t know her name, didn’t know her year, didn’t know her Path, didn’t know anything about her. All he knew was that he was in charge of her well-being alongside two other volunteers, and that they were to keep an eye on her condition and inform an actual practicing Biomancer if anything went wrong.

Thus far, she appeared fine physically, aside from the constant coughing and vomiting. Shiv knew there were no internal injuries left; he or Helix had peeled them away from her. But where her body remained whole, her mind was a splintered mess.

From what he could gather, she had a roommate, another girl known as Alicia Van Korwin. Alicia was awake when the fire burst into their room. Alicia was a good enough Pyromancer to hold back the flames for a second, allowing Shiv’s currently nameless patient to try and escape into their shared shower. But Alicia wasn’t that good of a Pyromancer; Alicia didn’t make it into the tub herself. Shiv’s patient got to see what was left of her roommate seared into the floorboards when the Jump Mages came to get her.

The two volunteers to Shiv’s left and right were both automata. They were both humanoid models that possessed a chassis of reinforced titanium, making them a great deal more durable than most organic students were out of armor.

“It wasn’t your fault,” the left automaton, its head shaped like the spade of a playing card, said. It brought down a hand to pat the girl on the shoulder, but she barely registered his touch. The other one kept offering her a glass of water, but she simply shook her head as she kept wheezing.

“We were… We were supposed to go to the Small Temples district this morning for a research project… We made plans… We made plans… We made plans…” She repeated that over and over again, as if her mind was caught in a loop.

Shiv looked down at the girl as Psycho-Cartography triggered.

Psycho-Cartography: She is in no state to answer any questions or compose her own thoughts. She’s still stuck at a point before the fire. She refuses to move past the trauma right now because denial is most minds’ main weapon against sudden and brutal changes.

Is there anything I can do to help her right now? Shiv asked.

Psycho-Cartography: As we have assured her physical well-being, it’s best to give her some room to process her loss. The more effective way to treat her is with Psychomancy. With mind magic, you can delve directly into her mind and find the worst of the damage. But that requires a psychotherapist, and as Uva told us several times before, even she is not suitable for such a task. Being a healer of the mind is as delicate a matter as being a Biomancer specializing in mending minute bodily details.

Shiv grimaced as the shaken girl continued muttering about her plans and classes, talking about how she would hate getting docked for being absent.

So, what, I’m just going to be waiting right now?

Psycho-Cartography: Unless you wish to dedicate a substantial portion of your time to finding out more details about this girl so we can have a complete psychological template of her, yes, you will be waiting.

The nameless girl heaved violently again, and she curled in on herself like a dying spider. Nearby, a loud scream erupted. The automata with Shiv looked in another direction. He didn’t. A human student from the dorms was having a psychotic break. Shiv knew that the boy had been holding it in for a while. And as soon as the boy cried out, several other students were swallowed by an atmosphere of hysterics as well.

The tent they were under was cooled by magic and staffed by volunteers working alongside the academy’s militia. Members of the militia here wore white berets, and on the side of the hut, there was an insignia of a serpent coiled around a staff. He observed them as much as he watched his own patients.

They wielded their Biomancy as if it were currents of soothing water. They didn’t slam it into their patients’ bodies; rather, they wrapped it around the wounded and traumatized. The militia Biomancers let their mana sink into the flesh, suffusing gently and scanning the organic architectures of each victim in vivid detail.

As Shiv studied their mana, he also noticed the consistency in the spell shapes they conjured all across the gathered victims. There were some slight variations between their workings, but ultimately, their patterns all mirrored each other: a layer of intricately woven circles made up of countless microspells surrounding a geometric square that radiated with a sheen of dense mana. The square usually ended up embedded within the chest of the patient, and there, it would pulse outward, lighting the rest of the body up. He didn’t know if he could memorize the entire spell, but he might be able to shape the square without much difficulty.

Memorization 14 > 15

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He began to use it on his current patient, pretending the spell was coming from one of the nearby Biomancers casting many spells at once. He knew she wasn’t injured, but this would be good practice for him. He focused his will and slowly mimicked the spells he watched the other healers cast. The square materialized on the surface of one of his mana hydras, but then nearly burst apart as the amount of magic it drew in spiked to ridiculous heights. The Deathless frowned and disentangled the spell shape before something could go wrong.

He regarded the other Biomancers once more and tried to figure out what he was missing. After watching one cast a few more times, he started again. They begin shaping the spell from the outside. The circles and other patterns need to be finished before the square. It’s not just some kind of pulsating foundation meant to flood the body with Biomancy; it’s also a stabilizer for the spell as a whole. On its own, it’ll just keep outputting more mana without any spell patterns that balance it out.

Skill Gained: Magical Theory 1 (Initiate)

He took his time with this attempt, mimicking each pattern in vivid detail. As he worked, a hissed whisper slid into his mind. “You missed a chain,” Helix near-snapped.

Shiv observed his forming spell and realized the orc was right. He begrudgingly applied a fix and added a sequence of interwoven symbols he didn’t fully understand the meaning of.

Helix hummed aloud in the back of Shiv’s mind as he continued probing his work. “This is meant to scan the lungs for any particulates or cancers: a complex diagnosis spell, something that will illuminate the body from the inside out and reveal any maladies it has. It is a well-made spell, I must admit. Whoever came up with it has keen insight into magical theory and a good grasp of their intent.”

“A compliment, from you?” Shiv sent telepathically as he worked on finishing the mana construct. “Must be dealing with quite a Biomancer.”

“As good as one can expect from a short-lived ape,” Helix declared. “Of course, I wouldn’t do things this way. This is still away from the true roots of the body’s biology by a degree of separation. I would simply go for the blood code and order the body to modulate itself, because that’s what the body wants to do, to read over itself. Right now, all the Biomancers are taking up far too much of the burden, and that is not necessary when you can recruit every single cell in the body to fight.”

With the final tentative gathering of Biomancy mana, Shiv’s spell was complete. It quivered in certain places, and a few patterns winked out. He struggled not to grimace, but then Helix let out a laugh.

Practical Metabiology 46 > 48

Multi-Tasking 43 > 46

Helix tutted. “Wow, look at that. It’s stable. Barely. Probably on the verge of collapsing in a few minutes, but still stable. More than I could expect for someone so untrained and without any grounding in proper magical theory.”

“So this is good?” Shiv asked.

“Oh, no, it’s terrible. Looking upon it fills my stomach with bile. But ‘good’ is relative.”

“So, functional shit,” Shiv interpreted.

The orc snorted haughtily. “If you wish to be proud of such a thing.”

A smile slowly crept over Shiv’s face. Everything was like working in the kitchen to some extent. You started by pursuing that beautiful goal of moving beyond incompetence, making sure your dish wasn’t shit, making sure your potatoes were properly diced. And after that, when your baseline was in the ‘not shit’ category, then you climbed to greatness.

Shiv swelled on these thoughts as he pressed his spell into his patient. Her insides lit up, and her veins, organs, bones, and more were all illuminated in sequence by pulsing surges of crimson mana. She didn’t notice at all; she was bent over the bucket again, spitting strings of saliva from her mouth. Her insides radiated with a flaring sheen of brightness, and as he looked over her, she seemed fine. Just as he… wait.

His Awareness snapped to a specific part of her body. There was something stuck in her chest.

Farsight 82 > 83

The spell was washing through her over and over again. It illuminated each of her internal systems. He managed to peer through her flesh and saw something lodged in her left lung. It was small. He would have missed it without Farsight, but it was there, stuck in the branching blood vessels. “What the hells is that?” he muttered to himself. Helix didn’t mention this on purpose.

The two automata helping him leaned in as well. They observed the foreign contaminant revealed by the spell. “It seems that something is in the bloodstream, and that’s swirling on the side…” The spade-faced automaton stopped talking, but its fellow bot carried on: “It seems like the vessel’s on the verge of rupturing.”

The Deathless considered being bold, using his Biomancy field to reach in and pinch out whatever that thing was. But then he recalled how he utterly mangled his homunculus, and with that as a lesson in humility, he sought out a properly trained Biomancer instead.

He called out to a nearby healer wearing her white beret—she seemed to be an older student, and had a floral tattoo descending from her right eye. It glowed with the texture of a focus crystal, and Shiv watched as said eye came alight with magical power, Biomancy flooding her iris.

As she came over, she squinted at the problem from under black bangs. She took a step back, letting out a hissing breath. “Vascular swelling. Probably left over from smoke inhalation.” She made the shape of a triangle with her hand, and a stream of Biomancy shot forth, flooding the girl’s chest as it tunneled through to the source of the problem.

Shiv watched as the object stuck inside her was drawn out. It resembled a thick clump of sediment, a crystallized smear of ashes. After its extraction, the blood vessel seemed to settle into a restored state.

“That was incredibly dangerous,” the militia Biomancer commented. She looked down at a set of tags wrapped around the girl’s arm. Another member of the militia had branded her with a series of bracelets. One of them was green, color-coded for her current state of health, and the tag seemed to indicate who her primary physician was. “Damn it, Malcolm! Told you to scan the lungs more carefully. Second one you missed today.”

She shook her head, but then gave Shiv an appreciative glance. “Sharp eye, volunteer. You’re a Biomancer too?”

“I can’t call myself that,” he said. “I’m just a first-year. I haven’t even started taking any classes yet.”

“Ah. A late arrival. Well, this is very good work. If you hadn’t caught this, her right lung might have filled with blood. We probably would have been able to save her in time, so it wouldn’t have been a fatal matter, but the risk was still there. Also…”

She reached out and snatched the arm of another passing militia Biomancer—a goblin who was sprinting about, face masked with pouring sweat. She quickly whispered something to her comrade, and the goblin nodded before rushing off. “A senior healer is going to conduct a full suite of specialized lung scanning spells soon. That’ll see if anyone else has crystallized fragments of ash inside of them.”

The militia Biomancer let out a breath of discomfort. “My guess is yes. And that this isn’t an alchemical fire.”

Shiv’s wariness climbed as he wondered if she suspected him; he wanted to hear her reasoning. “What? Why’d you say that?”

“Because crystallized ash usually requires an application of concentrated mana. This doesn’t come from someone just breathing in an overwhelming lungful of smoke, but magically conjured smoke at that. It needs to fuse together from sheer mana density.”

Shiv felt a reinvigorated urge to drag a certain prisoner out from his cape and beat the man to death, but he held himself back. Need to check my own lungs too, he realized. What kind of bastard dumps crystallized ash fragments in the lungs of a bunch of kids? He only had one target. Why the felling hells was he burning an entire building down?

The Deathless looked over his shoulder and stared across the large tent. About twenty meters away, that pale-skinned girl sat, being tended to by several Biomancers. She’d tried to leave earlier, but she was made to stay and placed under watch. There were several heavily armed members of the academy militia surrounding her, keeping her separated from the other students. The red berets were not healers—they were a mix of Vanguards and Shadows or Thieves if Shiv were to guess.

With how promptly they were assigned to her, that tells me that this girl is special, and the academy knows that. More questions. Can’t ask her directly, but—wait, what’s that feeling?

A rattling sensation crawled over Shiv’s soul, and he realized his Chronomancy field was feeling a matching mana frequency nearby. His eyes widened as he saw a golden silhouette zip through the mess of students in the large tent, diving for the pale-skinned girl with a thin blade in hand.

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