It was a strange illness that none amongst the Collective had seen before. Vita Epheri was slumped over, not quite unresponsive but certainly nowhere near what one might call alert. Her eyes were glazed over, rolled back towards her cap, and the only sign of what might have happened was an emptied ether-vessel laying at her side.
The Collective sent a runner up to Ulane. It was a decently sized town, though the chance of a physician there being familiar with an affliction that quite clearly related to the ether Vita had dedicated her life to the study of when Vita's own wife could not make much out of it at all.
It was Rina, in the end, who came to terms with what seemed their only option — to seek deeper into the Labyrinth, in the pursuit of knowledge the Guardian might possess that might help where all other means were quickly falling short. Vita was rolled onto a stretcher and carried then through the teleporters down to Fort Hestina, where a waiting angel soon noticed that something was awry.
It was barely five seconds before the Guardian manifested and cast her icy gaze over Vita's form.
Vita had found her life changed by the absence of the Mother of All. Not… empty. She still had the person whom she loved, and she still had the work that she had dedicated herself to, and in the grand scheme of things it wasn't as if she had personally depended upon the presence of the Creator all that much. Still, there was a puzzle piece that she had not known she had needed until it slotted into place, and that had just as soon dissolved into nothingness, leaving no substitute.
She had not seen what she had done in response as risky. Ether had allowed her to commune with the Mother before, and even as She had faded Vita had found some succour in taking a higher dose, hearing whispers and fragments just as she had when the Mother had first spoken to her. The dose that she had needed got higher and higher with each passing day. She hadn't heard the Mother of All for a week when she finally resolved to try one step higher.
And one step higher had proved one step too far. A white, blinding light, that swelled through her vision and her senses, that swelled thence into her mind, threatening to erase her.
And there was nothing that she could do but sit, wait, and hope.
By the time Vita arrived before the Guardian, there was not much time left. No time to explain, nor to contemplate the ramifications of what she was about to do. She held out her hand, taking into it the essence of the Creator that now swelled forth from Vita's being, flowing into and out of her in currents and eddies on the verge of tearing her very being into pieces in the turbulence. She reached down into Vita's mind, feeling out the shape and structure of her memories, and replicated that structure in the ether that flooded her being.
She wove it, then, into a golden relic.
She hoped — for she could never know — that that would have been the Creator's choice, too.
Vita grips Rina's hand. Rina gives her a reassuring smile.
“You'll be fine, love. You've prepared for this for so long. I'm right behind you.” She kisses Vita quickly, then shoos her toward the stage.
Vita smiles at her wife. Age has touched Rina now, fading her cap and wrinkling her skin, but to Vita she is still the most beautiful person in the world. She takes a deep breath, spreads glowing golden wings, and lifts into the air. She was never fond of drawing attention, but Rina is right — she's practised for this, and needs to play the part.
She flies onto the open-air stage, wings drawing every eye, and alights at the podium. Rina, Heida, and Lin follow on foot to take station behind her, Lin's wings folded against her abdomen.
“Thank you for coming, everyone!” Vita announces. “Thyslann's l-love be upon you.”
She pauses, looking out over the faces. A few she knows; most are strangers.
“For those who don't know me, I am Vita Epheri. I have long believed the eight Paths of Magic were not the only ways to c-channel the powers of Creation, the legacy of the Mother of All. For thirty years, my friends and I” — she gestures behind her — “have been s-studying and developing a new way to express Her power. I am pleased to announce that we have succeeded.”
Thirty years. She never thought inventing a new form of Magic would be easy, but she's spent half her life on it now. They all have.
“It is my very great pleasure to announce a new Path of Magic: the Path of the Heart. It governs the body — not as the Mountain or the River do, with temporary enhancement, but instead calling upon the Creator's light to heal wounds and cure s-sickness.”
Sleepless nights of study. Hundreds of hours probing the internals of the body, learning how magic flowed through it, how people mended like — and unlike — plants.
“We developed this Path to share it. So thank you for being here for the official opening of the new Royal S-School of Healing! Here we will train healers, physics, and alchemists in the ways of the body — to heal in ways both mundane and magical. We hope to bring care to those who need it most, great and small, rich and poor.”
The first breakthrough: Lin channelling magic through an ether crystal, a cut sealing before their eyes. The hope that faded as nobody else could reproduce it for months.
“Before I go, I would like to introduce those who made this dream real, who will serve as the school's senior faculty. Please join me in thanking Heida of the Collective!”
Heida had been invaluable, retrieving ether from the depths of the Labyrinth whenever they needed more. Without her, they’d have run out long since, and the concentrated essence of the Creator had been vital for teasing magic itself into new channels. She nods at the crowd. The years wear on her now, her scales duller, her movements stiffer, but she is still formidable, a lifetime of advocating for the independence of the Labyrinth somehow still leaving her time to help research.
“Lady Zhi-Zhu Lin!”
Lin, expert on all things anatomical, pioneer of a new way to use River magic to view inside the body. She gives a small smile and wave. She looks exactly as she did at the end of the Labyrinth War, untouched by time. Vita's ascension to angelhood — and enthusiastic espousal of the Mother of All — took some of the religious attention away from her, but she still disliked adulation.
“And finally, a woman without whom I w-would not be here — my wife, Rina Epheri!”
Rina. Dependable, devoted, with an incisive medical mind second to none. She made sure they ate regularly, documented everything, and turned their flights of fancy into practical therapies. She scowls at the attention - age has only made her more curmudgeonly - but softens as she meets Vita's eyes, and manages a polite smile to the crowd.
The first time anyone but Lin had healed was in the Collective. A child broke a leg; Rina went to set the bone, and Magic flowed from her hands. The bone knit whole. She had fallen back, speechless.
Vita gazes out again. “Thank you for your time. I hope t-this school will someday help all of Thyslann into a future where nobody need fear sickness or injury. Thank you.”
After that, they just had to learn to do it on purpose. Slowly, the Magic was mapped. Every person they healed was a small miracle, validating three decades of toil. They had done it. They had succeeded. Together.
— Written by Tamsin C.