The Medicine King's Heroic Tales, and the Apocrypha

"The 〈Medicine King〉? That Medicine King — Carla Nazar?"

"You know her?"

"Yes. A figure from the old heroic tales. Said to have, single-handedly, eradicated an unknown contagion."

"Ah—"

Merea broke into a pleased smile at her words.

The smile turned wry almost at once.

"But Carla — said herself she'd failed. The first contagion she did clear, yes, but the epidemic that hit the city after that, she couldn't treat. It chewed at her. That's why I never got past 〈King〉, she'd say, half-laughing at herself."

"…You've spoken to the Medicine King?"

At the confident way Merea said it, Marisa thought impossible to herself — then asked anyway, before she could stop.

The 〈Medicine King〉 Carla Nazar of those heroic tales was a figure from a very long time ago. However long-lived, surviving to this age was impossible.

But having pursued the thought that far, Marisa caught on.

The matter of where her master had been living until now.

— The Sacred Mountain of Lindholm.

"No way…"

"We can do the long version later. This one's hurting; let's get on with it. — Mind you, it might get harder from here on."

He turned his face back to the dragon.

Marisa, watching his back, considered what harder from here on was meant to mean.

---

The standard heroic tales of the 〈Medicine King〉 Carla Nazar varied in the details — depending on who passed them down or who set them to writing — but the bones were the same.

Carla overcomes a series of trials, eradicates an unknown contagion, and is hailed as a hero.

But there were also a small number of apocryphal texts that ran a quite different story. Where the standard tales praised her, the apocrypha — the variants the public didn't generally read — leaned into ridicule.

In particular, the apocrypha described the medicine she'd compounded as defective.

Yes, the Medicine King had banished the contagion with her medicine. But — many had also died from drinking it.

A toxic compound, the apocrypha said.

Those with weaker constitutions had not died of the contagion at all; they had died of the cure.

The graphic detail of those texts kept them off most shelves. Historians, however, prized the apocrypha precisely because of that — the polished hero-image was too often warped by what the public wanted to believe, and the apocrypha's blunter judgement made it more useful as evidence.

"■■■"

— while Marisa was sorting through her knowledge of the Medicine King, Merea spoke another word of Dragon Tongue from his mouth.

In the same motion, he laid the dagger to his ring finger and drew it across.

Red welled up at the cut, beaded, and dropped.

After watching a few beads land on the ground, Merea closed on the dragon.

"…I don't know how this will go. But it answered me in the eyes when I spoke — so let's try, all the way through. Left alone, it dies anyway. If it can't take Carla's blood, it dies. — But if it has to die, at least let it not die alone. I'll see it through."

He said it in a soft voice.

On impulse, Marisa wanted a look at his face. She shifted, quietly, until she could see his profile.

"Once you've made up your mind, you'd think death would mean nothing. But the moment it's actually right in front of you — the regrets come. When I nearly went, Flander was there with me. As things stand, you'd be alone. Maybe it's some kind of luck that we crossed paths, you and I. I don't think I can do for you what Flander did for me — but if you have to go, I'll stay."

A gentle smile.

In that smile, Marisa thought she saw something strangely fragile.

"— Marisa."

"H-yes. I'm here."

Hearing her name called out of nowhere, Marisa felt her heart kick.

She'd been watching his expression too closely — and the call had hit a gap in her attention.

She squared her collar in a hurry and waited, as composed as she could manage.

"Sorry to ask — if it gets too much for me alone, can I count on a hand? Like I said, it'll probably thrash."

A small, slightly embarrassed laugh under it. — A request.

Hardly the way a master spoke to his servant. The shape of it came from Merea still being thrown by the one-sided master-servant pledge Marisa had laid on him.

But for Marisa — hearing him put a clean please on it for the first time — her heart lifted.

At last. I can be of use to my master.

Truly, in a corner of herself, she wanted to clench a fist in private joy.

"Of course. Until life ends, I shall help you to any length."

"Don't go to your last breath, please."

— another troubled smile from Merea.

"For now, though — let me start alone."

She'd been ready to stand at his side at once. Asked to wait, she somehow pressed the urge down.

Leaving her where she was, Merea brought his bleeding ring finger close to the dragon's mouth.

The tongue still hung loose at the side of the jaw. A few drops of bright blood landed on it — and burst on contact.

"■■"

Drink, probably.

The dragon, at his word, mustered enough of itself to draw the tongue back into its mouth. Its body trembled weakly; but it was certainly trying to swallow.

"Carla's blood works fast. Four, five minutes and we should see something. Until then, we wait."

"As you wish."

Marisa folded her hands in front of her and bowed her head, just slightly.

"Hah. Even now you do it perfectly. — Right. While we wait — flip it on me, would you? Tell me your version of what you said earlier."

Merea looked over at her with a small smile.

"Of the Medicine King…?"

"Carla, yes. I happened to know Carla, and Carla was self-deprecating about her own work — wouldn't go into detail. What she did tell me, she may well have warped to put herself in a smaller light. The version that travelled out into the world might actually be closer to the truth."

The first half of the line invited a what, but Marisa pushed the impulse down.

Her master had asked. Tell me.

That request came first.

So she opened her mouth and began.

---

While Marisa walked through the standard heroic tales, Merea showed no particular reaction. The face of a man hearing what he'd expected to hear.

But the moment she edged onto the apocrypha, and began to summarise—

"— Mm. I see."

A firm nod. The gesture of a man whose suspicion had just been confirmed.

"Historians have sharper eyes than they get credit for. They've put their finger on Carla's regret, and got it right."

"Then she really—"

"Yeah. I killed my friend with this blood, she said. And many more besides."

"…"

For a beat, Marisa didn't know what shape her response should take.

Should she press the Medicine King's failures harder, given that this Merea — clearly close to her — was right in front of her? Would it sour his mood?

Several thoughts ran in her at once. And in the end—

"Even so. Carla's contributions were considerable."

— she went, instead, to defend the woman.

"Oh?"

Merea, full of curiosity, eyes lit with no malice in them. A clear, sarcasm-free smile of curiosity sat on his face — and Marisa, sensing a kind of beauty in it, laid out the answer she had prepared.

"The single largest of the Medicine King's contributions was that, while research into healing-formulae had been overwhelmingly tilted toward bodily wounds, she pulled the field's attention toward epidemics. Healing-formulae for wounds were always being studied. Epidemics — each with its own different cause — were not. For long, periodic plagues, a dedicated formula could be assembled; but for a new disease, the realistic expectation, even in the eyes of the most capable of any era's healing practitioners, was that a few generations of casualties would have to be accepted before the formula caught up."

"That's the picture, yes."

A nod.

"Healing-formulae against epidemics had to be built nearly from scratch each time — the kind of work that drove even the era's best healers to throw up their hands. — But Carla, alone, faced down that whole class of problem. She gathered the medicinal-formula research of every era and every region, added her own theorising, combined it with the existing body of medicinal herbs, and produced — at last — a medicine very close to universal cure."

"At that time, anyway."

"…Yes."

Carla's medicine had not, in the end, been a universal cure. It might, at that moment, have been close to one. But the history of failing the next epidemic stood there, undeniably.

"Long before Carla, a 〈Demon Lord〉 styled 〈Medicine Emperor〉 existed. Carla is said to have come, of all subsequent practitioners, closest to him."

"Emperor-tier, before Carla — that means—"

"Yes. A true Demon Lord, in the old sense — steeped in 'vice.' — Or rather: whether 'true' applies depends on the era doing the categorising, so saying it that way may mislead. — In any case, a Demon Lord who had got his hands deep into what the public would call evil."

"What did he do?"

"He produced the original form of the technique long held to be the ultimate of all healing arts: 〈Omnipotent Technique (Raftere)〉. — At the cost of a great many other lives."

"〈Omnipotent Technique (Raftere)〉."

"Even so, his version remained incomplete. Because the body of theory accumulated through it is held to be the closest anyone has come to the dream of the omnipotent cure, his version is named 〈Prototype Omnipotent Technique (Paleo Raftere)〉."

"That's — quite a thing to be cooking up."

Merea, somewhere between awe and dismay.

"And the completed form — still doesn't exist, I take it?"

"It does not. It's been held, for ages now, that the practitioner who completes 〈Raftere〉 will be granted the title 〈Medicine God〉. Since such titles began to be conferred at all, that seat has remained — without exception — empty."

"And Carla—"

"Carla received the 〈Medicine King〉 title for two contributions: producing the multi-effective epidemic medicine, and further developing the Medicine Emperor's 〈Paleo Raftere〉. The Emperor's Paleo Raftere had been near-omnipotent against wounds, but surprisingly fragile against epidemics."

When Marisa had reached that point, Merea let out a satisfied breath.

The reason the lecture ended there was probably the dragon at his feet — tail, just barely, swinging side to side.

"You know your subjects, Marisa. I'm glad to have heard Carla's version. — Thank you."

The straight praise and the thank you brought a faint colour to Marisa's cheeks.

"N-no. I'm flattered."

She let her gaze drift down and sideways. Looking him in the red of his eyes, while he was thanking her like that, was, somehow, embarrassing.

"That said — Carla's blood is one thing for humans. Whether it works on dragons, I really don't know."

"Medicine made by humans is, almost by definition, calibrated to diseases that affect humans…"

"Right. Long ago — the sky dragon who taught me Dragon Tongue once told Carla, make a medicinal formula that works on dragons, then. Wildly unreasonable. Carla blew up. Don't be a fool. I couldn't even save my own kind properly. Saving dragons is beyond me."

"S-sounds like a ferocious scene…"

"It was. And the friend who lent me the dragon's vocal organ joined the sky dragon in egging Carla on, more's the wonder."

"And Carla's response to that…?"

"— I no longer have a body. Ask Merea instead. I've never tried the medicine on a dragon, but the underlying mechanism — pathogen response — generalises broadly enough; perhaps it'll work. — She dumped the whole problem on me."

By this point, Marisa had no idea who all the participants in the conversation were any more — but the way Merea shrugged carried a small comedy of its own. She raised a hand to her mouth and laughed quietly.

Merea, noticing, laughed back.

"Sorry. None of this makes sense from where you stand. I'll explain properly, in time."

A small additional flush of pleasure at his words. — And then, at his feet, the dragon stirred.

---

Marisa braced.

If Carla's medicine was a toxic compound, the dragon would, almost certainly, thrash.

Pain takes the safety off a body. It might be the body raging out of the desire to live; it might be the death-dance, the burning of what life was left.

Either way — the dragon would thrash. Merea had said as much. Marisa did not doubt him.

Whatever came next, her job was to put Merea's safety first. Marisa, again, set herself to that.

And —

"— !!"

It came.

A roar that drove into the floor and shook it.