Chapter 152 – First Lesson

"Now, today will be an easy exercise," Lady Oriphusa says. "Sextia here has part of her arm cut off. We won't be fixing it today, but by the end of the week, I think you'll have everything you need to heal it. Having a lot of mana, which you clearly have, makes things easy. The only thing you need to learn about mana healing is controlling your mana outside your body and where to direct it. The longer part of our lessons will be on what to do when you don't have mana anymore. Happens mainly in war or when you have mass injuries or a plague. Plagues are the hardest to handle, and the Crown normally has a group that will hand out the instructions for how to handle any plague patient you don't have the mana to heal, so we will be skipping that."

"You won't show me how to heal her arm?" I ask.

"Not till I know you can handle it," Lady Oriphusa says. "If you can't by the end of the week, I will heal her. But I am fully confident, Lady Alzi, you will be able to. Maybe even in two days. Tomorrow will be the demonstration of today's theory. Now, when you have a wound like hers that has healed over, you have to start with a painful procedure. You cut off the end of the wound to give yourself a clean area to work with. I won't show you that on Sextia here. I will have a bunch of animals for us to practice on here tomorrow.

Aurora is kind enough to direct us to some chairs so I don't have to stand while Lady Oriphusa draws. What she is saying is important, but it has been so long since I've had a long lecture.

"Now, your mana will be able to make this cut since you are doing it for healing. There is no tricking the Goddesses. You can't 'plan' to heal someone to make it possible to cut with your mana. The cut must have a medical purpose that you know of, and then you must truly plan to heal the patient, or your mana will be useless. Many have tried to turn life mana into something that can take life, but the only people who have made that work are alchemists. Do. Not. Get caught helping them. Not just don't get caught. Don't do it. Healers will be out for your head no matter who you are if you help them make a potion like that."

"Does that mean there are other ways besides potions to kill with life mana?" I ask. "It seems that any that would have found a way were silenced."

"I don't care. Alzi, let me be clear. Your life mana is for healing," Lady Oriphusa says. "Not killing."

"Stupid. Almost everyone else gets mana that can kill."

"Most do not get mana that can kill. Most get almost no mana."

"You know what I mean."

"You need to be direct about what you are talking about," the snake says. "Now, enough of this. Life mana heals and brings life. It does not take and should not be used to take life. Healers all agree on this."

"So I'm not a healer?" I mutter.

"You are," Lady Oripuhusa says.

"Then we don't all agree."

"You want to die?"

"Yes."

...

"Just use your mana for healing, Lady Alzi," Lady Oriphusa says, giving up on the conversation. Luckily, she can't command me, but Aurora sure looks worried now.

"Now, controlling mana outside your body is about focus. From the circulation it comes out in one place and forms a stream going where you wish it. That is where you should start. When you get better with your control, you can send the mana in more streams. But to start, always keep it in one stream. You can give control to others. I'm sure you've done that plenty. To take control of others mana you need to use a bit of your own to corral it to do your biding. You can do it with mana of other affinities or wild mana, but there, you generally use more mana than what you get of their mana. It is normally better to just force your mana to do what you want," Lady Oriphusa says, giving a pause for me to ask questions or catch her breath.

Aurora taught me that, and I can already control a stream of my mana. I'm not sure why Aurora didn't tell her good friend what she taught me.

"Ok, with your mana in a stream, the next question is, where do you send it. This is normally a pretty easy thing to do. Once you get a healer class you will get a few skills that will tell you the health and show you wounds. Most get a skill that will basically show you where to send your mana and you can just follow that. But before you get this skill, you need to know it, and it is best to not need to use another skill when you have a lot of people to heal. So, the basic rule is deeper inside the more important. Chest and brain beating out the lower portion of the body. Remake organs first, then fix broken bones, then internal bleeding, then outer cuts. In some cases, like Sextia had, you will simply close off a wound to focus healing on people or areas that need it more. With great mana reserves comes the ability to care less about the order and just flood them with mana, but this will hurt a lot more and take longer. So only do it if you can't focus on the patient for one reason or another."

"Now I've got a doll that I will cut up, and we can go over the order with you," Lady Oriphusa says. A massive doll, bigger than me, plops onto the table. It looks like it is made of wood. "Here are the first injuries. I think you will be able to get them."

...

Two hours. For two damn hours, Lady Oriphusa had me telling her the order to heal. 'This is easy,' she said. So fucking easy that I didn't get a single one wrong. ME! Yet she planned out two hours of my day on that shit. Fuck why couldn't Kelly be teaching me? She said healing with mana is easy, so Kelly can do it even if she has less mana.

Damn bitch.

"My Lady, is everything ok?" the old maid dares to ask.

"What the fuck was that?" I answer back. Lady Oriphusa left, Sextia showing her the way out, but I stayed in the garden. I don't feel like walking up all those stairs yet.

"Hmm? Did I miss something, my Lady," Aurora says.

"The last two hours, I guess."

"I think you scared her by asking if life mana can kill," Aurora finally admits. "Most healers. Noble healers, I should say. Most noble healers are serious about the no killing or making poison thing, even in war. The good thing about that is it makes it so healers are safe during wars unless they put themselves in danger. No kidnappings, assassinations, or killings. But if your group is captured you would be expected to help heal the enemy army. I am sure you can use your mana to kill. But I would prefer if you did not go looking for ways to do it. I do not wish to find out if they really would assassinate you for it."

"These lessons better improve, or you need to find Kelly," I say. Would getting a woman so pregnant they burst count as using life mana to kill? I don't really need to kill with my mana. I could tie those brothel owner bitches up to a post and just whip them to death. See how big of a dildo they can take inside before they split in two for real.

Can the Princess let me kill them? Fucking dammit. Does she actually have something for me here? I doubt the Duchess will have the power to let me murder those fucking pieces of shit. But a princess on the throne just may.

Make up something about crimes against her husband or just quietly take them off the streets.

What is the Princess going to do about Sarania? I doubt she will like me having a woman loyal to me. I guess I will need this collar off, and then I would leave her anyway, so that doesn't really matter.

Maybe Yuki can find a way for me to kill the brothel owners.

"They will, my Lady. Princess Elora has paid her to teach you to heal. She will not go against the Princess," Aurora assures me. "Now, lunch should be on the way. You did well at the party, besides the little protest the men held, likely thanks to you. Lady Tara, fainting was not your fault, and you did everything correctly there. Thank you for doing that, my Lady. I know you will be looking for a reward, but I just have more lessons for you. I know Shimmer is planning on taking you to the bath tonight. I will try to get Geta to do something with you before she leaves. Then we have scheduled a tea party for you this week."

"I don't even get to pick when those happen?"

"Just this first one, my Lady," Aurora says. "You will have to hold them every so often. That is the law. But you will get to choose when they are. The head wife always picks the invites, but you traditionally get a few picks. You will need to learn of some nobles first."

"I can't invite commoners?" I ask.

"Um, well, that is something you will have to work out with Princess Elora, my Lady. It is not normal, but there is no rule against it. Nobles will get mad about it," Aurora says. Oh, it is good to watch her squirm. "You will have a lot of women wishing to get into your tea party. No man can promise a woman a child like you can."

"I want control over that. I'm tired of nobles taking kids from me. Ten years of giving birth to kids just to have them ripped from me before I can even hold them. Ten years of girls coming to the brothel, hoping I get them pregnant. Rarely did they ever come back to even let me know they were pregnant. My mother has seen more of my kids than I have," I say. "I can't get this fake family of mine pregnant. Rule after rule after rule. I don't get to see the first kids I thought were going to be mine grow up. You all took that away from me. Now you're telling me it will be a problem if I get women pregnant that I want to get pregnant?

Tears start to bubble in the corner of my eyes. So many things I've missed.

"What next are you going to say? I have to let the wives I hate get me pregnant once a decade? Are you all going to start raffling off my womb, too? I was told the law was I had to get a certain number of women pregnant OR try to get them pregnant in a year. I have done more than my fair share for this year. I have no law making me get more women pregnant. There is no law about me needing to go around and gift nobles more kids. I..."

"I know my Lady. I know," Aurora says, cutting me off. "It is not my choice here, ok. I know you feel that you are being used. You are. Shimmer is. Geta is. Everyone is being used to help Princess Elora get the throne. Even the maids."

Aurora gives a slight pause, watching me cry before continuing, "The year is almost up. I know this garden hides the cold. But it will be a new year soon, and all the kids you gave out this year will not matter to the law. So yes, you are having one more tea party that you don't need to have."

"Then just wait for the new year," I mumble.

Aurora doesn't answer, just keeps rambling, "There you will have women begging you to fuck them. They will dress in all kinds of fashion. Each hoping to find what catches your eye. Then, in the bedroom, they will do as you ask them as long as you finish inside them and use a bit of mana. My Lady, I know that isn't some dream of yours. I'm not blind to the fact men do not like how we women parade them around and force them to have sex. But that is the life you would live no matter what. Yuki would have you doing the same thing only the clients would have a bunch of fox tails. If she even took you to her realm. She may have kept you here for a while, and then you would have the same guest as you would here unless you married a few more women and they were pregnant for the rest of their lives. You are rightfully upset, my Lady. But things are not that different here than with Yuki."

"My Mother?"

"You put up a good show yesterday and last night. I am sorry about what Sedriresa did. I know the Princess was happy about the night. It is not right for you to have to buy your way into marrying your mother, but if you keep this up, you will marry your mother soon," Aurora says.

"No. The Princess was very clear. My only hope is that I got her pregnant. Otherwise, I have to wait till she has the throne."

"Lunch is ready, my Love," comes a sweet voice from the bushes. "Aurora is correct. I have talked with Elora, and she agrees that we can consider bringing your mother into our house. She would be a concubine until Elora gets on the throne."

"Mai and Kelly and Yuki? Then I think Nakuma wants in as well," I say.

"Yes. All of them. Our stubborn wife will need some convincing to let Yuki in early, but I'll get it done. Don't worry, my lovely dragon. I want to meet the woman who raised you. One that can still be so strong after suffering so much. None of us will be happy if they don't join our family," Shimmer says. A maid pushing the normal food cart behind her. "We just need a bit of time. I promise."