13th day of the Pale Moon, 1426

2 months before the Forges ignited

Wheezy, wracking coughs emanated from a cot in the back of the ward and echoed throughout the hall, joining dozens of others in their sickness and pain. The newest source of the coughing tossed and turned as his disease ate at his will to live.

A child tugged at a woman’s gown, desperately begging her to wake up. She was quickly ushered out by a local practitioner, but her wails could be heard throughout the entire hospital.

An unmasked doctor threw thin sheets over dead bodies and blankets over live ones. No matter how many blankets he applied, the sick still shivered and shuddered down to their bones.

A woman, dressed in a mahogany and teal jacket, walked with purpose between these scenes. She strode from cot to cot, flanked behind by a pair of local doctors – a mausk and a human. She knelt beside each of the afflicted, poking and prodding at the boils and lesions that littered their bodies. For some of the patients, she reached into the satchel at her side and applied quick remedies; the most common were aromatic herbs held beneath the nose and small incisions near infected areas.

“Doctor, must you touch every patient?” the mausk practitioner huffed. “We’ve lost many apothecaries to this affliction as it is; we can’t afford to lose a foreign one as well. Can you imagine the panic that would ensue?”

“Not just that, Manu; imagine this sickness spreading to another state, in addition to word that local and foreign doctors could not cure it!” The human practitioner exclaimed. “There would be mass panic, at the least. In the worst case, every human and felian in the states will die. That’s assuming, of course, that the plague doesn’t spread onto a Jupitian airship as well. It could spell doom for all of Saera!”

The doctor seemed to ignore the pair, focusing on her next patient. She rubbed her gloved hand over the bulging boils, eliciting a groan from the felian lying on the cot. She took her hand away and paused for a moment, before speaking to the pair as if she had not been paying attention to their conversation.

“Bring the bucket of leeches, Manu. Place one on each of the boils and leave them for half an hourglass. Sacha, do the same to the others in this ward.”

“Excuse me, doctor?” Manu said, his face twitching behind his mask. “Were you not told of my position here? With all the dead apothecaries, they’ve had to call in we general practitioners. We are well respected and catching this affliction could destroy our reputations, not to mention our careers.”

The doctor rose to a standing posture, her human form towering over the mausk practitioner’s as he continued his tirade.

“It’s bad enough we’ve had to turn to foreigners to do this, but you have the gall to order me to do what we hired you to do? You are a disgrace to every foreigner I’ve ever met! And furthermo–”

Manu was cut off by his sharp exhale as a bucket of leeches was thrust into his chest. He grasped the bucket and looked incredulously at the doctor standing over him. “You would dare make me do this menial labour?”

“I would and am.” The doctor’s voice was muffled behind her mask, but her anger was clear. “This is the third outbreak I’ve addressed this moon. If you are too damned high and mighty to even attempt to help these people; then fine, leave. But if you care at all about others, then start putting those leeches on.”

“I-I-I…uh, you, um…w-we…” Manu stuttered in response. He hung his head in resignation and grabbed a handful of leeches while the doctor turned on her heel and walked towards the door of the ward.

“Oh, Sacha,” the doctor said offhandedly as she walked through the doorway, “could you help me with the next ward? Be sure to bring the book so we can record the dead.”

Sacha hurriedly grabbed the book containing the names and causes of death of all that had died in the current outbreak. She jogged to catch up with the long-striding doctor.

“Sorry about Manu, doctor. He can be a bit of an ass sometimes.”

“It’s alright, Sacha. I wasn’t too hard on him, was I? It’s just that we have so few doctors available, these people can’t afford one that refuses to work.”

Sacha chuckled. “Oh, no! Manu has always been high and mighty, it’s nice to see him taken down a few pegs.”

“Why does he act like that?” the doctor shook her head. “It’s disgraceful to our patients.”

“Dunno.” Sacha shrugged. “Might have something to do with him only ever doctoring for the Vennua family.”

“What does that matter? One family or another, if they need our help we give it.”

Sacha cocked her brow at the doctor and said “You must be more foreign than I thought. Everyone knows that the Vennuas run Point Sayl. Most doctors dream of working for them, mostly because of the insane salary and generous ‘benefits’ they give to the people they consider important.” She pried a hand free from beneath the large tome and gestured when she said ‘benefits.’

“I wonder how many patients he abandoned for those ‘benefits.’” The doctor turned away and continued down the hallway toward the next ward with a brisk pace. The staccato sound of her boots clacking on the stone floor became the only sound to pierce the sudden silence. Sacha scrambled to keep up, concerned at the doctor’s sudden change in demeanor.

The pair rounded the corner into the next ward and were greeted by raucous coughing and the unmistakable scent of death. On one side of the room, grotesque, twisted husks desperately clinging to life cried out with their coughs for the doctors which paced the room to spare them the pain and torment. On the other side, near open windows, bodies upon bodies were piled haphazardly, little care paid to the pools of foul waste forming beneath them.

Sacha covered her mouth in surprise at just how steep the toll of this outbreak was. The foreign doctor drew an ink-filled quill from her satchel and gestured for the book that Sacha held.

Soon the doctor was a flurry of pages and bodies, only occasionally pausing to dip her writing hand into her bag to refill her quill. Sacha assisted the doctor, lifting heads and legs to give the doctor a better view of the disease’s murderous method.

Time slipped away while the pair worked on the pile and soon the twin lights were setting, shining golden wheat-like rays through the hospital’s windows. The doctor finally looked up from the book in her lap, her quill perched just above the page after she had signed her name in a rough font on the bottom of the last page of the day.

A light snoring turned her head to the entrance of the ward. The doctor sighed gently. She had been so focused on her work, she hadn’t realized when Sacha slipped out for a nap. A smile grew under the doctor’s mask.

“Not every doctor in the states is corrupt, Tes, don’t forget that,” she whispered to herself.

The doctor sighed and closed the book; it would not be needed till the morrow. For now, she supposed she owed Sacha a drink and a meal in the town. After standing and cracking the stiffness out of her back, she drew off her mask and began to pace toward the exit.

Not three steps in, she felt her legs collapse under her. Her body felt as heavy as a house. Her arms tried to throw themselves out to stop her fall, but they hung uselessly at her sides.

The impact and accompanying exclamation interrupted Sacha’s nap. She sprung up and looked about, her gaze arriving at the doctor’s semi-prone form. The doctor looked up and smiled at Sacha. She looked at the doctor with concern. “Are you ok, doctor? You look pale.”

“I’ve always been pale, Sacha,” The doctor laughed, “It’s comes with the profession!”

“Too many dead bodies? You have been working incredibly hard–”

“I said I’m fine, Sacha. Don’t worry about me so much.” The doctor shook her head and rolled her eyes. Her hand went to her chest as she stood. “Ooh, maybe just something in my chest. Or just my stomach yelling at me to eat, eh? Say, Sacha, would you be interested in some dinner in town? My treat.”

“Um, sure, doctor.”

The doctor walked over to Sacha, a bit slower than usual to regain her balance. “I suppose if we’ll be eating together, I should introduce myself. Name’s Tespis. So what places in this town do you like?”