Chapter 63: Treatment
Valens found the other Priest down in the church’s basement tending to the sick men. Simeon carried the smile of a devoted man too invested in his godly duty, his pate shining under the lights cast by the few lamps flickering across the walls, both hands stretched over a middle-aged Miner whose feet were covered in bloody bandages.
Warm lights washed off from those hands in a shower of lifemana, most of it spilling aimlessly about the ground while a little part of it managed to find its way to the Miner’s pus-filled blisters who occasionally grunted whenever one of them popped and hissed.
It reeked here in the basement but having been through a Cursed Rift, Valens found it oddly refreshing as he rolled the sleeves of his sorry-looking coat. They exchanged a silent, albeit a little tense, nod with the Priest before he gazed about the place to find more immediate cases that would demand his skills.
“Oh?” His mouth parted with a smile when he crossed eyes with one gruff-looking Miner who, even in bed, seemed to have refused to part with his precious pipe and was holding it to his chest as one might hold a newborn baby. Valens walked over to him and leaned closer. “Not much sense in that, isn’t it?”
“Thought they’d kick you out the moment they see that little smile o’ yours.” Harlow winced slightly as he pulled himself to a sitting position with one hand on the bed, letting his legs dangle lifelessly down the edge as he managed a pained smile. “Guess if you try just enough, you can even get a wolf accepted into a flock of sheep.”
“I’m the wolf, then?” Valens said. “That’s some praise coming out of you.”
“And you’re some Healer walking into the home of the Blessed Father.” Harlow took in a labored breath, and with chest rattling, he managed to give him a yellow-toothed grin. “Lies and deceit? Or was it that strange part o’ yours that seemed to be interested in this bloody sickness?”
“Circumstances,” Valens said simply. “Sometimes you have to make do with what you have in hand.”
“Damn right you do,” Harlow nodded. He seemed to have aged a good ten years during the time Valens chased the shadows off of that mountain, but still, he was that same strange man who had an interesting relationship with his fast-approaching death. “Aye, what then?” he said a moment after. “You didn’t force a way in just because you wanted to send some filthy Miner off to his much-earned rest, did you?”
“Not today, I’m afraid, since there have been a few complications.” Valens took hold of Harlow’s pipe and gestured him to lie down. “Turns out you might have a couple of years left in that battered body of yours.”
“Alas,” Harlow sighed as he let Valens take the pipe. “They don’t even let a man die a good death round here. Always be some complications.”
Valens first started with a Lifeward to see how the sickness progressed through Harlow’s feet and found most of the toes missing on the right foot. His left foot had only two of them left, but it was clear that the Miner wouldn’t be walking for the rest of his life. Up around his chest, it took Valens a second to catch that odd change in Harlow’s Resonance. His frequencies remained still altered, and just as Father Harmon said, they were working against his body if lacking their earlier vigor. Bit by bit, they ate away the man’s flesh, leaving behind dead tissue rotten beyond remedy.