Healing

2. papercut

It was a little after midnight when I decided to get out of bed and visit the castle's library.

I was tired, naturally. After somehow getting a glowing recommendation on my first mission, I was selected to leave the castle more often. It was exciting to start working on missions, I'll admit that the boredom of guard duty was starting to get to me, and I was committed to becoming the best scout I could be so I could quickly rise the ranks.

Giving your all in every single mission and accepting every job you were offered got tiring, though, so I was exhausted all the time.

Today was a bit of an exception.

Sleep didn't come easily, somehow. I laid in bed hours ago but couldn't stop rolling around in my mattress. My mind just kept wandering from one topic to the other while my body seemed to desperately crave sleep.

In the darkness of my room, I couldn't help but re-think my strange interaction with the golden guard. As my superior, and the one leading the mission, he was probably the one to issue the recommendation. Why did he do that after I froze and was almost killed? It led me to think about Lilith, her strange warning and even stranger behaviour.

I was starting to get bored of doing nothing, so I decided that if my brain was going to keep me up, the very least I could do was attempt to be productive.

So that's how I ended up in the emperor's library, in the middle of the night, dressed in my most comfortable jammies with a huge healing textbook tucked under my arm.

I greet the two scouts standing by the door and they greet me back. They lightly tease me for my choice of wardrobe, but they aren't malicious about it.

They let me in without further issue. Lilith had given me clearance months back, so I could use the publicly available books as a resource to study, and I came here often enough after-hours that they knew to let me enter.

Lilith would sometimes come with me, whenever she had time. I would study healing tomes and she would always, invariably, pick old books about curses. I never really understood why she was so interested in them, and she never really answered any of my questions, so I chalked it up as a distant relative being sick or just a strange interest. Whatever she seemed to be looking for, whoever, she never found.

I sat down on one of the tables and opened the textbook. The beginning of the chapter talked all about the evolution of healing magic and how it affected all kinds of techniques to cure small cuts and scrapes. It was kind of boring, but it beat being alone in the dark with my thoughts.

To be fair, I didn't have that much of a choice. Since I left Hexide to work full time at the emperor's coven, I was expected to take a couple of knowledge assessment exams throughout the year, just to make sure that I'd be able to handle the work I was assigned to in the coven.

My latest was in less than a week and I was due for a review. I have been a little too busy to properly study, so it would be nice if I was able to cram as much knowledge as I'm able to in this one session to compensate.

Halfway through the chapter, the author started mentioning different ancient artefacts and how their use influenced the creation of new spells. I don't remember reading about these artefacts at all, and the previous chapters don't do a lot to enlighten me. I start to panic before remembering that I'm, you know, in a library and therefore able to access other books as a reference.

I get up and leisurely make my way to the ancient artefact section. The library is so quiet that I can hear the front door opening echoing through the room and the sound of heavy boots against the floor.