"I told her what you told me to tell her," Shalia replied as Alena picked up the herbs on the table one by one and closely inspected them. "I told her that the boy is still in critical condition and can't receive any visitors," She added.
Alena nodded in acknowledgment before speaking. "Did you wash this blood berry in the same water as the ice flower?" Alena asked. She didn't miss the way that the girl before her winced at her words. When she first began to work as her apprentice she would usually try to lie about things like these, thinking that Alena wouldn't know. It didn't take long for her to learn that if Alena was asking a question about herbs, it was because she already has the answer. Still, despite her wince, the girl nodded, knowing that she'd already been caught.
"I've told you time and again that the chill in the ice flower neutralizes the herbal potency of the blood berry," Alena stated in a cutting tone. There was nothing that Alena took more seriously than magic and all its fields of research. She knew perfectly well that the girl didn't want to be here. The only reason she was here was because the town head saw the value of a healer. He knew that someday, Alena was bound to leave and so had repeatedly urged her to take in her daughter as his apprentice. The girl herself had never had any interest in being a healer. Alena, however, didn't care in the least how the girl felt about being a healer. Now that she was working under her, she would do things right.
"I'll get another," Shalia quietly replied as she turned around ready to head to the storeroom.
"While you are at it get more sickle grass, I told you to leave it in shade to slowly dry off, not direct sunlight. Once it leaves the ground, direct sunlight turns the grass poisonous. Just because it takes hours to dry doesn't mean you can cut shortcuts," Alena stated. "This coiling thorn vine is full of your blood, you clearly weren't listening the last hundred times that I told you that warm water is a simple way to keep the plant from thrashing around. Exposing your patients to your bodily fluids is a quick way to add more complications to the treatment process if not outright killing them.," Alena explained. Alena didn't miss the scowl that slowly formed on the girl's face as she took apart the mistakes Shalia had made with the close to fifteen different herbs on the table before them. She, however, didn't relent. So much so that, by the time she was done, the girl stomped her way out of the room. Alena couldn't help but frown as she noted the fact that the girl had made a lot more mistakes with the ingredients today than was usual. Why that was? She didn't know.
Letting out a small sigh, Alena moved towards her own workstation. Placing a hand on a crystal orb at the side of it, she poured in a bit of mana to turn it on. This workstation was barely more than scrap compared to the ones back at the magi academy. The enchantments carved onto it weren't anything out of the ordinary and could only exhibit the most rudimentary of effects. But while the enchantments were only basic ones, the fact that they had been carved on ordinary wood and could be worked without the whole thing either blowing up into splinters or burning to ash in an instant was a feat that would floor all jaws in the magi academy. Alena always had mixed feelings about this workstation.
She was a once in a thousand years genius in magic. Even without being vain, Alena had enough self-awareness to realize this. However, even she knew that without the injuries that she had suffered, she would never have been able to figure out how to carve artificial mana paths in normal wood. It wasn't until her own body was damn near completely broken that she figured out just how much mana could burden weaker bodies. As she slowly tried to rebuild her mana pathways and coax her now frail body into using mana, she slowly figured out a way weaker bodies could use mana without being immediately destroyed. As such, while it wasn't anything impressive as far as enchantments go, the workstation before her was still a revolutionary invention in the world of magic.
Like water flowing along a channel, Alena watched as blue lines of mana flowed along the artificial mana pathways carved into the wood. Even though she had seen it more than a thousand times before, she still carefully observed both the way the mana flowed in the carved pathways and how it interacted with the wood around it. In a way, despite being just a table, the wood before her was a perfect representation of her body. Mundane wood was just as frail as her own body when it came to handling magic. By observing the mana move along the wood and the various effects it had, Alena could draw parallels and perhaps figure out ways to increase the speed of her recovery, or at the very least avoid making it worse.
Alena had just begun to get engrossed when the door to the lab opened once more and Shalia walked back in with a tray full of the various herbs that Alena usually used to wipe down the boy. The break in her concentration forced Alena to stop with her observations for now. She, however, wasn't bothered by this. It had been a year since she'd last drawn any new inspirations from the workstation. When the girl came to stand beside her, Alena quietly picked the first herb from the tray and placed it in the center of her workstation. Part of the reason workstations were so useful was because the runes and enchantments carved onto them could draw on the ambient mana in the air to supplement the magi's own. Also, with some spells already carved onto it, she could activate them like flicking a switch on and off. Something especially useful in her case in particular as it allowed her to skip the strain that the use of magic usually put her body in.
Picking one herb after another, Alena made quick work of preparing them. A water-repelling spell to dry the washed sickle grass. A restraining enchantment to hold the coiling thorn vine while she took out its thorns. A chilling charm to keep the ice flower from losing its medicinal potency. Activating one enchantment after another, she barely spent more than a minute dealing with each of the herbs. In ten minutes, she was done correctly dealing with each of the herbs that Shalia had made a mistake in preparing. "Tomorrow, I'll need you to go gather some more sickle grass, the bark of the nightmare willow, the roots of the fire rose, and some snapping flowers if you can find any," Alena instructed, completely ignoring the scowl on the girl's face. She knew that the girl hated being made to prepare all the ingredients manually when Alena could easily do in ten minutes what would take her hours to accomplish. Alena completely ignored the girl's disgruntlement. "Remember, there's no point in picking any of them if you do it wrong and destroy them," She cautioned. "Take your time and do it right," She instructed before waving the girl off. "You can go home for the day," She dismissed her.
After the girl left, Alena spent another ten minutes closely observing the flow of the mana through the wooden table and the effects it had. As had been the case for much of the past year, she didn't glean anything. After ten minutes, when she was certain that Shalia wouldn't be coming back for whatever reason, Alena turned and walked over to a wall. Looking at it, there was no way to visually tell that it had been modified. Unless one knew how to activate it, they wouldn't think of it as anything other than a mundane wall. Touching a certain part of the wall, Alena poured in a bit of her mana before waiting. There was no button to press, lever to pull, or hole to slot a key in, the trigger for the secret mechanism would analyze Alena's magical signature to confirm if it was the right one before triggering. In places with advanced magic, this wasn't that big of a security measure as there were ways to either fool the mechanism or even bypass it entirely. Here in this remote village, however, it might as well have been an impregnable bank vault.
Nothing opened, there wasn't any secret compartment behind the wall. Instead, a dense, milky-white fog started to seep out of the wall. Inside every room in this building, at the top four corners, there are small, round, metallic balls, no bigger than the tip of one's pinkie. Even with her new skill set, carving a recording enchantment on wood would put a little too much strain on the wood. It wasn't that the recording enchantment itself was all that advanced. Instead, it was a matter of thresholds.
A good way to think about it would be like a string that can only bear a certain amount of weight. Past this weight, the string would snap. A recording spell, while not too advanced, was a little over the maximum weight allowed by wood, so to speak. While with her method the material used wouldn't immediately explode into smithereens, it would slowly degrade over time. Wood would char, rock would crack and crumble away, metal would slowly overheat until it melted, and so on.
These were recording devices that constantly monitored the room they were in. Most of the time they were inactive as the rooms were empty. Whenever she had an in-patient, however, she would use them to monitor their condition. This, however, was the first time that Alena was using the metal balls to spy on someone. It took some time but eventually, the milky-white fog coalesced into a white screen before her. Moving with practiced ease, her hands weaved runes in the air that sunk into the white screen connecting it to the four round balls in the boy's room.
