Death Healer

Lily was frozen in place as she gazed at the older boy, who had suddenly appeared beneath her window. She glanced back to where she had come from and then looked at the boy again, ensuring this wasn't a figment of her imagination.

“What are you doing here?” Lily asked, taking a step back.

“You are dumb,” Lumius said in his monotone. “And you are not the first person to think they can just run away from this place. One of my cousins was skinned alive for trying this.”

“Your family killed your cousin?!” Lily balked.

“I didn’t say that. They skinned him, but then they healed him back.”

Trembling, the girl looked down, her brow furrowed in anxiety. She began to hyperventilate, uncertain of her next move.

“If you run, they are going to send [Hunters] after you. They don’t want to prevent anyone from fleeing because it’s easier to shatter hope once you think you have tasted your freedom. My family employs [Trackers] specialized in this. You would be back here by tomorrow morning—but in the dungeon.”

“W—why are you helping me?”

“If we need to get married one day, I need you to not lose your mind. My father would still force me to go through with the wedding even if you weren’t able to speak from all the torture—before you ask, that’s what usually happens. I don’t want to marry a puppet and be worried that you might take your life when I’m not looking.”

Lily wasn’t sure how to react to what the kid had just said. This must have been the greatest rationalization she had ever heard from the mouth of a twelve-year-old. The degree of pragmatism this kid was emanating scared her.

“Go back,” Lumius sighed. “Please.”

“I—I can’t stay here,” Lily blubbered, “I can’t. I’m going to lose my mind. Those prisoners...”

The boy didn’t seem shaken by her words, but he nodded slowly.

“Go up. We need to talk.”

...

Climbing back up into her room wasn’t too hard, thanks to all the practice Lily had gotten from training with Elysium over the years. However, the worst was clearly just about to come from the little boy’s mouth.

“You won’t be able to leave,” Lumius stated matter-of-factly, not even blinking.

Lily, her clarity of mind slowly coming back to her, breathed in deeply and looked at the kid not with her child's eyes but with the adult mind she’d brought from another world.

“Does it hurt when they burn you?” She asked.

This time, Lumius frowned.

“When you’re sparring,” she pressed.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lumius inhaled.

“It does. Why do you have to go through all that?”

“My family needs power to survive. [Necromancers] are storming the front. Your parents are there too and could die at any minute; don’t you feel compelled to run over there and blast their enemies to pieces?”

“My father doesn’t torture me to make me level up faster.”

“Lucky you,” Lumius’s countenance broke, and sarcasm dripped from his words. “My father is the [Pope]. What do you think is going to happen to me, the third son, if I don’t become powerful? My brothers are already dispatched on missions and crossed the level 100.”

“Your father already said you were the heir,” Lily frowned.

“You dull girl,” Lumius trembled. “He wants my brothers to feel pressured to improve. I am not the real heir.”

“What?” Lily’s eyes widened.

“Aurora,” Lumius spoke slowly with wisdom beyond his years, “my father wants the strongest to rise up and conquer the spot the same way he did. My brothers are already planning what Dungeon I’ll be sent to in order to be eliminated silently.”

“I—I,” Lily muttered.

“They are already forging connections while I’m still waiting to receive my class. If I don’t excel and live up to the weight my father has put on me, one of my brothers will be the next [Pope].”

“Why...”

“Because we are all expendable. You didn’t really think you were going to marry the actual heir, did you? A member of the Gens Claudia?”

Lily must have looked pretty confused because Lumius actually laughed bitterly.

“You are a child. Your family is the enemy of mine. The Gentes around mine are a check for the papal control of the Church. My father wants to get rid of the last heir in your main family line—and he also doesn’t want someone from your side to be married to someone with real power. You must have thoroughly impressed him actually, for him to decide to not put you together with a lesser member of our family.”

“What?”

“Your talent is as great as your naivete,” Lumius cradled his head, looking around and sitting by a table. “If he thought you were useless, he would have just given you to some idiot. But he didn’t because he’s afraid you’ll grow too powerful. Instead, he’s hoping that you grow into a threat that’s big enough for my brothers to feel even more pressed to become stronger. Then, when the moment is right, maybe after our main contribution to the war, we’ll both die poisoned in our bed chambers.”

At that moment, Lily didn’t find Lumius to be the repulsive kid she had first seen – a heartless monster. No, he simply looked like a tired man who had never had access to his childhood. Her instincts made her feel protective of the boy.

“Can’t you just... go away? Once you have your class, can’t you...”

Lumius didn’t even bother replying, and they both fell into tragic silence.

“Can I... help?” Lily asked.

“You can’t even help yourself,” Lumius sighed. “You can train and pray that [Cardinal] Atticus is right about you having the potential to become a [Saint]. Not that just a [Saint] would suffice. They have killed many of those before, I suspect.”

“There must be something else we can do.”

“Never trust anyone, Aurora. That, and surpass every expectation for your training. Those are the only two things you can do.”

“Should I trust you on this, then?”

“No,” Lumius replied curtly. “I need you to become powerful and notncreate problems for me. That is all I wish for in my life – power. The irony is that it’s just what my father wants of me. You? You are nothing to me. Nothing. But my future now depends on you not being an idiot. So, that’s that.”

Lily walked closer to the boy and felt a pang of guilt in her stomach.

“Can I ask you something?”

“I can’t help you elope.”

“No... it’s something else. You said all you wish for is power. Don’t you have any dreams for your future?”

Lumius raised his head, borrowing a hole into her with his grey eyes.

“A dream? I need to survive first. I can worry about dreams later.”

...

Lily walked through the Papal Library, looking straight ahead. Her head wasn’t as busy as usual with the lavish decorations, the art, and the intoxicating smell of books.

Up to this moment, Lily had mostly lived a life of peace – a pampered life. Now, though, her mind was somewhere else.

Her mind was at war.

After talking to Lumius, she realized just how messed up her life had just gotten. Or perhaps, it always had been like that, but she had just refused to see it. It was hard to tell.

As she reached the Forbidden Archive, she pulled out the book she had gotten from her house. She had only briefly stayed in her room, knowing that if she tried anything funny, the [Pope]’s watchdogs would be onto her.

The Book of the Dead lay in front of her as Lumius’s words resounded in her ears.

Surpass every expectation for your training.

...

Two Weeks Later

Lily had become numb to the horrors she was subjected to, much to the delight of the [Cardinal]. But unlike Lumius’s frustration and aspiration for power, she was just angry. She was fueled by resentment and fiery-hot rage that made her go through all her standard training without even batting an eye. Even the [Executioner] in the dungeon had started looking at her with newfound respect.

And she found it disgusting.

That’s why she spent every single minute of her free time trying to see if she could become powerful enough to escape or, better, get revenge on her captors one day.

She needed something, an edge or a secret that would allow her to escape and get rid of these golden chains.

That’s why she looked at her notes as she perused the Forbidden Archive: she had been studying the great differences between Death Magic and Light Magic, trying to see if anything she knew could possibly be used to become more powerful. Sadly, Light Magic didn’t seem to have anything scientific related to it, unlike the actual skills, like [Minor Healing]. So, while [Minor Healing] leveled up this fast, thanks to her great understanding of the human body and experience as a biology teacher, she didn’t have the same luck with the more general branch of magic.

One would think that I could shoot lasers if I could apply what I know about physics, Lily grumbled inwardly and pored over the pages of notes, hypotheses, and small experiments she had conducted.

However, Light Magic did not behave like light at all. It behaved, instead, like some sort of wild, shamanistic knowledge that could only be experienced through esoteric beliefs.

In fact, she had been digging into the history of Light Magic more and more to see who had come up with it initially. Sadly, it seemed like the official doctrine stated that the God of Light made Light Magic, and that was about it. There was nothing else on the topic. It was a big, fat ‘our Lord made it and deal with it.’

That’s why Lily’s eyes fell on the cover of the book of the Book of the Dead, and her eyes found purchase on the weird double serpent symbol on the cover.

A memory of when she was a toddler suddenly sparked up in her mind, and her eyes went wide.

“The cradle!” She shouted, jumping up to her feet.

...

Lily had asked the servants to bring out the cradle from the Gens Claudia family and show it to her. It had taken an hour, and the day was about to end when they had finally found it and brought it to her.

I don’t have much time, she thought as she started scanning the cradle for the symbol she had remembered.

Suddenly, she found a single serpent coiling around a chalice and drinking from it. Her fingers traced the wood, and she took out of her bag the Book of the Dead, comparing it with the two serpents coiling around a cross.

Now, the more she thought about it, the more she realized the single serpent had been a symbol present in several artworks of the Church, something that had been accompanying her in the background for all this time. And even though she couldn’t put her finger on it, it seemed important that the Book of the Dead presented a completely different iconology.

As Lily got up and started walking toward the entrance of the villa her family lived in, she found her future, gray-haired husband waiting for her.

“Are you going to flee?” Lumius asked, eyeing her.

“No,” Lily shook her head, brushing past him. “I needed to check something. Let’s go back.”

“Good,” the boy replied when, suddenly, a shout stopped them both.

“Lily!”