Page 74 of Devil's Doom

Another agonizing moan drifts in from the patient room. I close my eyes, counting backward from ten.

Nienad is a good teacher, simply because he cares little about his patients. He has no qualms about letting me treat them under his instruction. That’s why I’ve learned a lot very fast. I can treat various curses and work with a patient’s magic to heal them. I’ve also learned how to infuse medicinal brews with magic to make them more potent. I know the basic anatomy differences between the most common races.

If not for my successes in the sick chamber, I would feel like a complete failure with how my combat training is going. The downside of that success is, Nienad expects me to treat most of his patients on my own.

“Fine.” I turn around, honing my anger into a weapon. “I’ll dismantle that time spell and heal him before sunset.”

“You have my blessing. And eat something after you’re done,” Nienad grumbles. “Maybe he will enjoy you more if you put on some weight.”

“Maybe I’ll eat you,” I mutter.

My life has never been as lively as it is now. I spend every day surrounded by people, going from training to meals, to the sick chamber, and back. I interact with friends and strangers every day, and while it gives me that sense of belonging I’ve missed all my life, it also has shocking disadvantages.

Like the constant comments about my body and supposed relationship with Woland. Nienad isn’t the only one who criticizes me. Since Woland is everyone’s master, and I am apparently his, everyone feels entitled to voicing an opinion.

“What hurts the most?” I ask the young chochol man prostrated on a straw bed in the corner of the room.

He turns his beak toward me, looking utterly miserable. His feathers have a unique, creamy color, and his beak is light brown. His hands are pressed to his abdomen, taloned fingers shaking.

“I-it f-feels like s-snakes. C-crawling inside m-me.”

I push his shirt up just in time to see his abdomen bulging under his ribs before it settles again. I lay my palm over his stomach where a human’s navel would be, and something moves underneath, like a pregnant woman’s belly.

My nostrils flare as I take a deep breath. Knowing Woland, it might as well be snakes trapped in the poor boy’s intestines. I cannot fathom how the rebels still worship and adore their leader when he sends at least two a day to the sick chamber with various injuries, but if anything, Woland’s casual cruelty seems to endear him to his followers.

“It shows his magical prowess,” Lutowa told me once after stuffing herself full with an entire roast duck, complete with most bones. “Only the strongest can afford to curse people left and right without a thought. I admire him.”

I once told Wera she was mad for supporting a man like that. I usually keep my mouth shut, but that was a particularly grueling session, one of the first after we burned each other. She tortured every inch of me twice, and as I lay on the floor, bleeding, I couldn’t hold my tongue.

After my breathless insult, she cackled maniacally and said it was a privilege to be cursed by the master.

“All right. I’ll take the pain out into that orb,” I say, pointing at a crystal pain container. “And then, we’ll see about removing those snakes.”

“N-N-Nienad already t-tried that,” the patient gasps out, his face spasming with agony. “J-just p-please m-m-make me s-sleep.”

“No,” I say with grim determination. “I am going to heal you, and magical sleep will interfere with that. Stay still.”

I clap my hands, and ropes lying by the head and foot of the bed rise and wrap themselves around the man’s wrists and ankles. He whimpers, his orange eyes wide with terror.

“Try to breathe and remember that being cursed by the master is a privilege,” I mutter with spite, focusing on his body in front of me. I close my left eye, leaving only the violet one open, and see inside him.

It’s a trick Nienad taught me that only works with my magical, purple eye. With my vision enhanced by a spell, I look through skin and muscles, seeing right into the hurting intestines. An eye glitters, its pupil vertical, then a flash of scales. I grit my teeth, even more determined to end the curse before Woland’s set time. The animal will most likely die once the sun sets.

“Good news,” I say with a fake smile. “It’s only a small viper.”

The chochol moans in agony, and I pull over a stool, perching myself by the bed. I put both hands on his abdomen and lay out my magic in a thin net, covering the entire area affected by the spell.

I immediately sense Woland’s warning. The spell isn’t time-bound—it contains a counter-curse that will hit anyone who breaks it before sunset.

“Bastard,” I grit out through clenched teeth.

When the chochol tenses, crying out as his stomach wobbles with movement, I try taking out his pain. It’s usually a simple procedure and very helpful, letting Nienad operate on people while they hum or talk easily, completely unbothered as long as they don’t see what he’s doing.

The pain won’t leave, though. Woland took care of that, too. For a spell cast out of impulse, this is incredibly complex.

I see movement out of the corner of my eye. I whip that way, but there are no odd shadows, nothing out of the ordinary. Just my idiot pining heart seeing things.

As the patient strains and screams in his ropes, I consider the problem. I don’t know how to stop Woland’s counter-curse from hitting me, and Nienad won’t help me since he made it clear he wants to wait until sunset. I can’t use Woland’s blood pendant as protection, either. I learned a good deal about blood magic since I got here, and it turns out, a small amount of blood can only bear a certain amount of magic.

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