Exclusive #2: Recovery's Realm

Vanessa, Sage of Recovery, sighed as the Jinn hospital monitors made the bad beeps. She squeezed the cold hand one final time, wishing the deceased a peaceful journey. The Yazata did not preach of any afterlife, but the church Vanessa attended claimed such a thing possible even if there was no scriptural support. It was a comforting belief. If only she could truly believe it.

She moved down the line in the packed ward to the next bed. The woman on this one was conscious still, her eyes wide with concern as she desperately gasped at the air being pumped into her through plastic piping by machines. There were fluids being pumped into veins, wires connected to adhesive sensors stuck to skin, and steel spikes inserted into each temple.

The Jinn doctors would give hasty explanations of what each piece of medical technology did if pressed. They were busy, though. Too busy even to humor an Arahant Sage come to offer humanitarian aid. Her initial concern was that the hospital methodologies appeared perversely cruel. That was just the way of the Jinn and their legal energy, though. They saw human bodies as machines to be repaired. It clashed with her insight terribly, introducing discord into her own efforts.

“Hello, friend,” she said to the woman as she stroked the exposed forehead, careful not to brush the metal injectors stabbed into the skull on each side. Those were supposed to keep oxygen going to the brain, she knew. And oxygen was something brains needed, she’d understood well enough from context. Vanessa’s domain stretched out to begin its subtle work, guided by her insight into restoration.

“The path back to health exists. Will you walk it with me?” She pulled up her kindest smile as the worried eyes fixated on her. These poor people. Sickened by miasma exposure and the only solutions their own kind had were so horrifyingly invasive and uncomfortable.

The beeps all around continued, but they were mostly the good ones. Her patient relaxed a bit as the two of them held eye contact. Jinn and their machines. Couldn’t they understand that the sick needed the comfort of another human? She held the woman’s hand as she continued stroking her forehead.

“I’m a member of the Open Arms Initiative,” Vanessa explained. “That’s an organization dedicated to healing from the nation of Svarga on Maya. Several of us volunteered to come here to help in whatever way we can after the dragon attack. I never heard of one of them targeting a true world. The Garuda usually intercede on our behalf.”

The woman’s cheek twitched at the mention of Garuda. Jinn didn’t care much for the religion of the Yazata, she knew. Vanessa resolved not to bring up the subject again. This woman needed comfort and healing, not evangelism.

“Mercom and Svarga and even Amarat have signed a grand compact,” Vanessa said. “They guarantee mutual aid should a dragon ever threaten any of the true worlds again. War Barge Elliott, the Sage of Severing, and the Lord Annihilator actually killed the dragon. Has anyone told you of that? There has never been a credible report of such an epic feat in all of history. Humans killed a dragon. At the Open Arms Initiative, we are hopeful that this will begin a new era of peace between the major powers of the multiverse.”

As she spoke, Vanessa continued weaving with her domain. Her insight had been recognized by enough of her peers to grant her the title of Sage, but it had been a close thing. Quite a few thought her abilities too limited and thought she better qualified as a Savant – someone who possessed an insight into true reality but of something too minor to merit the title of peak honor.

Though she understood the cause of their elitism, Vanessa found it more than a tad insulting. The insight she’d gained was in fact vaster than that of any other Sage she knew of. Recovery. It encompassed healing and repairing and even the very flow of time. Truthfully, she thought her insight spread itself too thin. She could completely heal any person held in this ward so long as they still drew breath. But should she do that, she could help no one else before returning to Maya and restoring her energy for several months.

It was the eternal conundrum she faced. Help one person in drastic fashion or help hundreds to a lesser extent? The choice hurt every time she made it, whichever way she went. Dramatic heroics felt great, but then she was sidelined when others needed help. The parsimonious exercise of her ability, on the other hand, led to her standing by while the seriously ill passed.

She could never win. It sometimes felt like she was being punished for having an insight so broad in scope. If her unconscious grasping at ultimate truth had been more modest, she could encode the insight into a realm and walk around letting resonance do most of the work. Instead, she watched people die all the time. The thought often crossed her mind that she should stop putting herself in situations where she faced so many sick and wounded. But if she could so easily bring herself to turn a blind eye to suffering, she wouldn’t be the kind of person to gain an insight into restoration.

Her domain worked at mending what had been damaged by the inimical miasma. The work was deft and subtle to save on illusory energy. The whole of her patient grew slightly better from her efforts. That was how her power worked. Holistically. None of this ‘treat the body as a collection of systems’ nonsense.

The woman before her calmed and even smiled.

A spike of alarm rose in Vanessa. Relieved of the pain and the panic, her patient was giving up the fight to live. This was not at all what she intended! The woman could survive, she was certain of it. The damage was mostly confined to the lower lungs. Jinn therapies were preventing the pooling of liquids there. The air was being forcefully pushed to make breathing easier.

Why was she giving up now? Was it because Vanessa interceded?

As Vanessa stood, gathering her energy for a dramatic effort, a Jinn doctor intercepted her. “Do not overexert yourself on this one, Sage Vanessa. Her blood oxygen saturation dropped low for too long before first responders could stabilize her. There was significant brain damage.”

The pressure of the ward with all of its mechanical hisses and beeps grew several times heavier in the span of a few sentences. These doctors wrapped their hearts in callous logic so that they could do the most good possible. She understood her way could never work for them. That wasn’t how legal energy worked. They didn’t do fast miracles. They did science and built complex tools. As mighty as the Jinn were, they were ultimately powerless to truly heal.

Her insight squirmed within her as if coming to life. Vanessa almost let the hysterical laugh bubble free of her. Sages and Savants studied for decades in attempts to grow their insights into something greater, for the most part without any luck. Yet here she was, already with more than she could effectively wield, spontaneously deepening her grasp of restoration.

The truth of these matters was that no one could force insights. They came to a mind that was ready and no one could know in advance when that might be. Vanessa stood in that medical ward, crushed by the grief of her constant struggle, desperately searching at a subconscious level for a solution. And her thoughts opened.

A glimpse of ultimate reality graced her raw mind. It was everything she already knew, laid out with a clarity she could not achieve normally. The vast panorama of her Absolute Truth did not grow in that moment. All that changed as she looked upon it was her perspective.

With an inspired effort, Vanessa seized the realm aperture of her soul, roughly forcing it into alignment with her glimpse. Her realm was large enough for this, if she could be clever enough. Blending related concepts together to save space. Excluding some concepts that weren’t necessary for a resonant effect. Blurring other concepts that could function well enough with some minor inefficiency. It could work. It had to work. She would not stand by while people she could help died. Not any longer.

The picture she painted within her realm was partially abstract geometry, partially imbued intent, and partially pure thought form. It was equal parts insane and inspired. It was beautiful and organic and – most of all – true. When the final elements clicked into place, Vanessa admired the design she had wrought.

And then her transcendent vision faded, bringing her back to herself just as reality trembled and shifted about her. The metaphysical weight she carried had not increased, but the world responded to her presence like never before as resonance took hold. Through instinct, Vanessa leaned her conceptual might on the right spots and felt reality soften to her will.

With a slight donation from her energy reserves into her domain, the world was set right.

Throughout the hospital ward, every machine changed its beeping at once. No one else would be dying that day. Wherever she went from now on, people were going to live.