301: [Bonus chapter]A Healer and an Oracle

[Bonus chapter]A Healer and an Oracle

Exhausted and drenched in sweat, Adela's chills showed no mercy, compounding the agonizing ache in her joints as she lay sprawled beside the vanity mirror on the carpeted floor. The room's lights seemed to pierce her skull, intensifying her already throbbing headache and discomfort. Yet, the thought of extinguishing those lights while she toiled over her metalwork remained entirely out of the question.1

"E-Egon..." She stuttered out his name, her body trembling as she struggled to stay conscious. This marked the onset of an experience unlike any other she had known. It was not difficult to recognize her hallucinatory state given the abrupt change in her surroundings and the absence of the intrusive lights.

"Adela, hurry and take a seat by the mirror; our time is limited," a woman's voice urged.

Despite her certainty that it was her own voice, she chose to heed the guidance nonetheless. With that mere thought, she found herself seated once again by the vanity mirror, in the very spot where Samandra had dressed her as a nun.

Glancing at her reflection, she was startled once more, for it was the oracle's face that gazed back at her. But what heightened the frightening quality of this hallucination was mostly her hair: blonde when she looked down at the locks over her shoulder, and black when she looked up again.

"W-What's happening?" she stammered.

The woman's mirrored lips remained motionless.

"Speak!" Adela commanded.

"What's happening?" the reflection eventually echoed. "A mother who saw the future gave birth to a monster, but she couldn't help but love him. Does that clarify things?"

Adela swallowed hard. "Yes. Thank you," she awkwardly replied, her eyes fixed on Aldric's mother.

Perhaps it wasn't a hallucination; perhaps Adela's sanity had finally frayed.

"I am here to answer two questions. You already asked your first. I am also here to bestow upon you an oracle and a warning. Choose your final question wisely."

An oracle?

"I... I..." Adela attempted to articulate her thoughts but failed.

"You may not desire knowledge of the future, and that's no surprise, as only the foolish do. You have no choice. I will reveal what I came to impart. So, swiftly, ask whatever you wish."

The Oracle's reasoning was incredibly rational and hard to dispute, all that Adela could do was to press forward. delving into her heart, she searched for a question she genuinely wanted to ask. Within moments, she found one.

"How is my husband... No, not that. More precisely, are his scars burning in my absence?"

"I possess the knowledge of a soul in a limbo between this life and the next, and this is your concern? Are your husband's scars burning?"

Adela nodded.

"Not yet. They won't immediately, for you have shared your essence with him in bed. But they will if he doesn't reach you promptly."

The response eased some of Adela's anxieties but brought forth new concerns. Alas, the number of questions she could pose had reached its limit.

"The Oracle I came to deliver is that you will give birth to the awaited one."

Adela felt stunned, but her reflection in the mirror only displayed a faint frown.

"Why the astonishment? You've already seen them, haven't you?"

A child of hers? She had seen them?

A distant dream flitted through her mind once more—a child in a forest, someone she had to reach, someone she had to protect at all costs.

"That is accurate," the oracle commented as if privy to Adela's thoughts. "That dream wasn't ordinary; it was a premonition. Oracles and Healers, we are one and the same, one trait dominant, the other dormant, but we bear both. It's our curse."

Curse?

The reflection nodded.

"What distinguishes a blessing from a curse, apart from the beneficiaries? Was your blessing never a curse to you?"

"Never," Adela replied honestly.

Something as wonderful as alleviating Egon's suffering could never be labeled a curse in her eyes.

"Very well then, I will issue one warning and depart. You must never forget what I have told you when you awaken."

Unable to make a promise when unsure of her capacity to uphold it, Adela gazed back at Aldric's mother in silence.

"Female Healers who will follow you centuries from now shall endure grave trials."

"...Surely they'll be safeguarded by kings and knights."

The Oracle shook her head.

"The world centuries from now will be devoid of chivalry. Those women are a link in your chain, and your choices in life will impact them all. I've foreseen it. I'm here to caution you that they'd rather never have been born."

It was perhaps one of the cruelest things Adela had ever heard. Rejecting the gift of life, wishing they'd never been born, seemed somehow worse to her than taking a life once it had already begun.

"You are mistaken. I, too, would prefer never to have been born. This warning, if heeded, becomes a gift to those future lives." The Oracle said, responding to Adela's private thoughts.

How ironic it was to be asked for strength in the midst of a fever-induced hallucination.

"If I could prevent someone's suffering centuries from now, my own body wouldn't be trembling with fever on this cold floor."

"You are not weak," the apparition reassured. "And the plan you've painstakingly crafted is only missing one crucial element. Take that straw with you."

The straw...

"I have no need for it," Adela declared firmly.

"You know you will need it. You may continue to deny it if you wish. I must depart now."

A strange sadness washed over Adela as she prepared to part ways with a hallucination that had briefly visited her. Yet, there remained a faint possibility that this apparition held the essence of the Oracle, compelling her to convey one final message.

"...I'm sorry that you were trapped here against your will."

"I am sorry as well, though my remorse is not for you. You will find your escape."

"How?" Adela inquired with a desperate tone.

"Perhaps that was the question you should have posed instead of the other?" The Oracle replied, casting Adela into a well of regret. "But you do possess a plan." she asserted, yanking Adela from her momentary misery.

"I lack the ability to manipulate metal... my energy is likely too depleted for such feats."

"You cannot remain here, Adela, and death is not an option. Only you possess the means to prevent the suffering of the Healers. Only you can ensure that this curse is never passed down again."

Adela clenched her lips. How could she fulfill this monumental task?

With a myriad of conflicting emotions, she watched her reflection gradually return to her own face in the mirror. And as she attempted to rouse herself from this strange experience, she believed she heard the Oracle utter one final message.

"Live. Live eternally, Adela."

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