The Imposter’s Remedy

Thirty Moon-Turns of life had taught Thalia that death was rarely quiet, but in the suffocating damp of Moss-Spire, it was deafening. Her beds inside the tent were already filled and the outside of the tent had begun to resemble an above-ground mass grave, the people barely hanging onto life. The canvas tent, once a bright white, smelled of wet forest, iron and the foul, sweet rot of Crimson Fever– the brutal pestilence currently tearing through her city. Thalia did not possess the magic nor know of any that had helped heal this ailment.

Above her worktable, the tarnished, brass lantern hung as a single flickering sun in the gloom, casting long, jittery shadows across her clean glass vials and pewter basins. Her eyes burned, dry and heavy from three straight days of no sleep. 

Whispering her healer’s mantra – “Measure twice, breathe slowly” – she reached into her herb satchel for the soothing, bright-green leaves needed to cool her patient’s burning skin. In her haze, she failed to notice the faint, dark-red veins running through the dried stalks, nor did she pause to check.

Her patients were moaning in agony, her hands trembled as though two tiny earthquakes were shaking them. She dropped the leaves into the boiling kettle, and wiped her hand across her forehead, the sweat now pouring down her face as the midday sun beat against the tent. Once the kettle whistled, she poured herself a small cup of the healing tea to test its strength.

She stared at her lantern and almost immediately, she saw it start to move and swirl. She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. She didn’t feel any wind and she surely would see it moving the tent flaps if there were some. She tried to focus on the light inside the lantern, trying to steady her vision. Her vision seemed to get worse the more she intently stared though, which gave her a pounding headache.

She looked down at her mortar and pestle with widening eyes, not sure what went wrong. She decided to throw out the tea in the kettle, assuming one of the ingredients wasn’t pure any longer and she had just not realized it. She threw the remaining tea out of the tent entrance into a small bucket. She unsteadily made her way to her makeshift sink and started to wash the contaminated dishes.

Once she had dried them all and was preparing herself to start walking again, eyes squeezed shut and leaning against one of the wooden poles holding the tent up, she felt a small tap on her right shoulder. Startled, she looked quickly to see who it was.

She was almost knocked completely off her already uneasy feet. What she saw in front of her should not be possible. But it was. Right in front of her was another… her. She closed her eyes again and rubbed them with her shaky hands. When she opened them, the other “her” was gone. She sighed with relief, but before she turned back around to face the sink, she heard a whisper in her ear. 

“Over here,” the voice breathed so lightly it felt like a breeze tickled her neck. Thalia whipped her head around, followed by the rest of her body when she realized that the other “her” was standing near the sink smiling at her.

“Who- who are you?” Thalia barely got the words out of her now completely dry mouth. She stood there mouth gaping like a fish out of water.

“That’s not really important right now, but I am here to help you. It does not seem like you are doing that great of a job by yourself,” she replied snickering.

Thalia side eyed her, squinting. Someone must have recruited her to help, and simply forgot to let Thalia know before sending her into the tent. 

“Well,” She started slowly, “I do need some help. Did you see the piles of barely alive people out there?” She does not receive an answer from the other “her”. She continued, “But before I can let you help me, what do I call you? What will you go by?”

The other “her” paused for a second and looked Thalia in the eye while bringing her washed mortar, pestle, and kettle over to the fire, “You can call me…. T,” she finally replied sitting next to the fire pit.

Thalia slowly walked over to the pit, and kept an eye on T. When she got to the edge of the pit furthest from T, she lifted her fingers up, pointed at the wood inside. “Alright, T. Let’s whip up a new batch of healing tea,” she replied, setting the wood ablaze with her fire. She reached down and fetched her herb satchel, rummaging through it to see what she had left and if she needed to send T out to grab more. 

Though as she thought about it more, she didn’t know T or if she can trust her to grab the correct ones. What if she is here to sabotage Thalia and her reputation as a healer? She once again looked at T warily. Should she even be here alone with her patients? What if T was sent here to get Thalia to leave the tent so she can kill all her patients and blame it on Thalia? Questions like this ran through her head faster than she could keep up.

“Are you okay, Thalia?” T met her gaze, a worried look flashed across her face. Thalia didn’t remember telling her her name. Or did she?

“How do you know my name?” She blurted out without a second thought. 

“Well, you told me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“When?”

“When we were over by the sinks,” T slowly stood up, and walked over to Thalia. “Are you sure you are okay to continue? You seem to be experiencing slight memory loss.” T reached a hand towards Thalia’s forehead as if to feel for her temperature.

Thalia jerked her head out of the way on instinct. T looked at her like she just offended her in the worst way possible. She tried to ignore her and reattach the kettle to the tripod hanging over the pit. With the fresh water in the kettle, she waited for it to start boiling. 

She walked over to the closest patient to her. A man who looked to be barely over 40 Moon-Turns, pointed ears slightly drooping on either side of his head. His eyes were sunken and his dark hair stuck to his forehead from the clammy sweat that drenched his entire body. Little spots of blood covered the corners of his mouth. She took a wet rag out of the bucket hung on his bedside table, and proceeded to dab up some of the blood.

“Hey, let me help. You aren’t doing it soft enough,” T tried to grab the cloth out of Thalia’s hand. Without fully realizing it, Thalia smacked T’s hand. The hand was snatched back as if it was on a burning hot kettle.

“You don’t even know these people,” Thalia’s eyes burned with anger, making them hurt more than they had before. “Do not touch my people. When I need help, I will let you know.” Thalia pointed to the spot T just got up from, then quickly wiped away sweat from under her eyes and on her cheekbones. 

As T slunk away from her, she turned her attention back onto the patient in front of her. She wiped more sweat from her face before returning to the blood on his chin. While she did this, she noticed her patient was shivering. Confused, she grabbed a blanket and placed it near the fire to warm it up. This patient shouldn’t be freezing, it felt like they were on the surface of the sun, at least to Thalia. 

While she waited for the blanket to warm up, she touched the chest of the man, and closed her eyes. A warm glow emanated from her palm and he slowly stopped shivering. This temporary magic will at least keep him from the terrible shakes this plague was known to inflict on its victims.

She moved over to the next bed and redid the braids in this elf’s hair. This elf had long, beautiful blonde hair, which Thalia was trying to keep from getting matted and knotted. When she finished with the second braid, Thalia’s vision blurred. It got so blurry, she couldn’t see her hands in front of her.

She blinked hard a couple times, but that didn’t help correct her vision. She sat down on the ground next to her braided patient putting her head in her hands. As she slightly rocked back and forth, she suddenly felt someone standing over her. “Still don’t need any help? You don’t seem like you are good enough for this line of work. You can’t even go a couple days without sleep and you get sick. How are you supposed to help your patients if you aren’t well yourself?” She heard T whisper from directly above her.

Thalia let out a huge sigh and tried to spring to her feet, only to be knocked back down on her butt by the building pressure in her head. “Shut up. I don’t know who let you in here but I think it is time for you to leave.”

“Leave?” T’s voice rasped, no longer the quiet whisper it had been this whole time. Her cruel, hollow voice echoed through the canvas tent. Thalia scrambled across the dirt floor, desperate to put distance between them, her hands blindly searching for a weapon to protect herself, and her patients from this intruder. She knew something was off about her.

Her fingers find purchase on the silver handle of her washbasin. With a ragged, hoarse scream, she lunged upward and swung the heavy basin with whatever strength she had left directly at T’s unwavering, scowled face. Metal slammed into bone with a sickening crack, sending water, glass vials, and herbs crashing to the ground in a flurry of silver and shattered glass. 

Panting, Thalia watched as the other healer stumbled backwards against the swaying brass lantern. As Thalia panted, tears and sweat stinging her eyes, the light slowly settled back to its starting position. She did not see any blood on the other healer. Instead, as she looked closer, the figure began to stretch and warp across the torn tent walls until all that was left was a single long shadow – casting back from Thalia’s own fragile frame. The tent became utterly quiet, save for Thalia’s own ragged breath.

The flap of the tent suddenly flung to the side, the bright afternoon light spilling across the mess of glass and Thalia’s blood. A tall, leather-bound mercenary stepped in, sword half drawn as he took in the sight. Thalia raised her wash basin in defense.

“Whoa, pardon me, Healer. The city council sent me to grab some more of the Purple Velvet moss since you let them know you were out of it.” The mercenary slowly lets his sword slide back into its sheath, as if to show Thalia that he is not here to bring her harm.

As if to follow his lead, Thalia set her washbasin down on the worktable and beckoned for him to come all the way in. He did, and he quickly handed over the bundle of purplish-green oval shaped herb known as Purple Velvet moss. Thalia looked at it and then at the mercenary. 

“By the High Ancestors!” Without another word Thalia ran over to the bucket outside of the tent where she threw out the rest of the tea she had made previously that made her imagine an imposter healer. She grabbed a thick stick lying on the ground and used it to pick up the wet, mushed up moss from the bucket. There she saw the blood-red veins slightly visible, running through the moss. Blood-vein moss – the neurotoxic lookalike. She had poisoned herself and almost poisoned her patients.

“Where is the other healer?” She questioned, her dry voice cracking in the quiet gloom.

“What other healer?” He asked as he looked at her sweaty, red face.

“You know, the one that was sent here to help me out.” Thalia tried to look around the side of the tent to see if she went back there.

“Thalia, there is no other healer. You are the only one.”