Black Heart Chapter Two

The Empire of Phantasma could be broadly divided into five parts.

There was the North, frozen over and forested heavily, rich in trees and ice and not much else. The Northern wilderness grew few edible plants, which in turn meant that the game animals were few in number. Those solitary wild beasts which lived their own lives in the north were typically heavily furred, but for a Northman, fur was often something that was too valuable to be sold. The border of the North naturally came to a halt at a frozen river, beyond which there was currently no way for communities to survive in the long term, and only mad hermits would be willing to spend the deathly winters squatting next to a fire pit that they would guard more dearly than their own body, as once the flame guttered out their life was almost certain to end before they could get it started again. If the fire were to die as they slept, they would simply never awake again. Those who lived in the north relied heavily on trade of their lumber and treasures harvested from local dungeons and the monsters that emerged from them to supplement the limited sources of food that the North naturally offered.

In many parts of the Empire, the populace would hesitate to consider a monstrous Orc as being edible, given that it would walk upright and it had the hands to fashion and make use of tools. In the North, however, such hesitance could not be offered. Monster meat was often tough and unpalatable, but it was better than a completely empty belly... and it could be fed to hogs and to hounds, if nothing else.

The South, by contrast, was almost too lush and vibrant to survive in. A jungle expanded far beyond the Empire's borders there, and the strong and the bold could carve out new fiefdoms into it to join the nobility... if they and the brave settlers they brought along with them survived the venture. The great issue there was not growing and raising food, but rather preventing the local plants from resurging and taking over farmland anew, and the local wildlife from breaking down barriers to feed upon the crops and the livestock... and the people.

The one thing that the South didn't need, of course, was more lumber. They had too much already, from rapidly growing jungles that they had to slash back and burn off regularly, and the husks of tree-based fiends. It was low quality, of course, but there was an argument to be made that there was no point in trading for high quality lumber when they could just continue to collect the stuff they had for free, and easily replace it as needed indefinitely.

So, direct trade between the North and South was a matter of exchanging crates of sawdust-packed ice blocks for preserved food. The simplest such trade between regions of the Empire by far, albeit long enough that many caravaners would hesitate to commit to the simple and profitable circuit. Magical methods of preservation and of covering the ground more swiftly could make the exchange more profitable still, but they naturally had their own expenses.

The West was mountainous, with tall peaks and harsh cliffs where the slightest misstep could easily see someone plummeting to their death, dashed against rocks far, far below. There were some stretches of relatively level ground suitable for farming, but by and large the West was the mining region of the Empire, with a focus on extracting the mineral bounty beneath the frost-tipped peaks.

The stereotype was that if ever a Westerner was in need of quick money, they should pry up their floorboards and start digging out a new basement. It was untrue, but the region was certainly the source of most of the Empire's naturally-formed gold. With coal and metals so plentifully abundant, it was also the region that held the most smiths and ironworkers, producing most of the simple arms and armor of the Empire, along with a great many tinkering eccentricities.

The borders of the West came to a stop at steep cliffs that most often dropped directly into the sea, as though an enormously massive being had taken an equally gigantic blade and sliced away the land there as though it were dividing up pieces of a cake. Often, tremendously high waves would batter against these cliffsides and halt any intentions of clambering down to the ocean level and trying to lower timber to fashion boats from there.

It was the East that naturally allowed for oceanic exploration and harvesting of the sea's bounty. With gentler waves, the East region of the empire was made up of many rivers, bays, and chains of islands stretching out into the sea.

It was from the East alone that voyages could set out to attempt to find new lands, and it was to the East that they would sometimes return, laden with mysterious treasures of far-off and unknown kingdoms and tales that were scarcely believable... Though it was these tales that gave Malicia cause for consideration on the stray line in Sophie's journal, 'Monk= far eastern? Martial Artist', even as she was somewhat uncertain as to the nature of an artist of warfare.

Regardless, far more often than not, such a voyage would simply not return at all, lost to either the whimsical fury of nature or the depredations of other men, pirates living on lawless islands. It wasn't as though the other regions were free of banditry, but Eastern piracy held the greatest chance of suddenly striking it very rich indeed as a brigand, if such a voyage were to return with full holds.

And then there was the Central region of the Empire, where all four blended together into the calmest and most pleasant stretch, modestly wealthy in all areas though it could in no individual way outperform any other region.

It was in the Center where the Emperor and his immediate family ruled from a golden palace, with more distant cousins set out as rulership of the further-flung regions. King of the North. King of the South. Of the East. Of the West. All pushed away at different points in the dynasty, to ensure that they would have difficulty scheming and enacting plots to attempt to gain greater control over the Empire's Golden Throne... if not usurp it entirely.

In concession to this, however, a measure had to be taken to give these families of lesser royalty some small but present chance to push their machinations, lest open rebellion be invited. A way to push the burden of expectations onto less tested and less confident youths, who were more likely to err and in their error draw their elder's ire down on their own heads rather than against the plotters seated on the Golden Throne.

The Academy of Might and Magics. Or, simplified for more recent generations, the Adventurer's Academy. Every member of the Central Emperor's family and that of the Four Kings were obligated to attend, and the lesser nobility rapidly followed suit, making it a tradition that scorned those who abstained from it and spawned many smaller traditions in its wake.

That wasn't to say that it was something exclusive to the noble classes. No, so long as you had the money for tuition or you managed to qualify for a scholarship which waived it, anyone could enroll in the Academy, gaining a chance to earn the prestige that came of graduating and becoming a licensed Adventurer. Without that graduation, one could only act as a Mercenary.

Despite how preference was given to Adventurers over Mercenaries, it was, in almost every purely-practical sense, the same thing. Indeed, there were cases where Mercenaries could be considered technically superior, having been overlooked as Adventurer Candidates or simply leveraging a greater amount of experience in some area.

No kingdom could truly afford to refuse people who were interested in trying to make some money by risking their life in the dungeon, after all. That would just see a spike of brigandry in response, after all. All the same, a great deal of effort was put into romanticizing the licensed Adventurer and downplaying the efforts of the humble Mercenary seeking to put food on their plates.

One of those methods was enforcing a strict time-frame. The Academy could be entered at the age of sixteen, and only at that age. There were no exceptions under any circumstances, leading to the occasional situation where a deathly ill young noble scion would have to arrive at the Academy on time regardless, and then remain secluded in private chambers for some weeks until it passed and they could make belated introductions to their peers.

In short, to have a chance at the license all of a candidate's affairs had to be in order, arrangements for the tuition or scholarship made, before they turned seventeen and the window of opportunity shut for good.

Malicia was, naturally, expected to attend.

She was, naturally, expected to attend 'as a healer'. It was her Monk class and its extremely meager healing capabilities that had factored most heavily into her selection for adoption, after all.

The Ravensworths were titled as Counts, managing a hilly stretch of forested land that was almost directly on the border between the North and the West, cool in temperature and not quite of either one region or the other.

More importantly, for several generations now, a Ravensworth had attended the Academy in the important role of a healer. At some point, this fluke of chance had turned into a tradition, and when the first and second child of the family had been born to the classes of Aristocrat and Swordsman, other nobles had begun to sneer down their noses at the Ravensworth's impending failure to maintain the tradition of a healer in every generation.

Malicia was not truly a part of the family, and the eyes of the Ravensworth parents would pass over her in a room as though she were a ghost, invisible and not to be seen. She had been adopted not because she was wanted, but because it was needed. As a way for the Ravensworths to have something to point at and declare 'You see? We will do whatever we must to respect the tradition our forefathers began' when needed, to be ignored at all other times.

More importantly, she had been selected specifically because she could fill the role, but also do a bad job of it. She had been chosen as a hedge, just in case they had another child that was born with the correct Class, so that the odds were good that the child of their own blood would outperform her where it was important.

That indignity burned, resurging every time a small and injured animal was dumped out of a box or sack to leave one more bloodstain on the wooden floor of Malicia's modest bedchamber, where the butler would observe in condescension.

"Go on, then." he said, carelessly dropping a lamb on the floor. "Fix this."

Its belly was open. The smell of blood and the guts that were spilling out through the wound hung thickly in the room. That should bother a child her age, and so Malicia made sure to grimace and hesitate as she carefully drew close before grabbing and squeezing at the animal's neck until it lost consciousness from the lack of air.

She could simply force the animal to stillness, hold it in place... but that made the treatment a little more complicated, and it wasn't what the butler wanted to see. Making sure to hesitate again, crinkling her nose at the feeling against her fingers, Malicia gingerly pressed the organs back into the right position and then squeezed the edges of the open wound together as she pressed her slickly reddened palm against it.

A Monk's healing ability involved circulation of energy in the body to promote a brief period of rapid regeneration while expunging toxins. It was more broadly comprehensive than most healing magic, which would have one spell for healing injuries, another to purify infection, another to detoxify... but in exchange it had some flaws.

It was best used on the user. While it could be used on others, injecting a small amount of energy and using it to prompt the healing circulation in a different body, it wasn't something that could be done from a distance the way another Class's healing magic could. It also wasn't anywhere near as fast, so Malicia had to sit there, continuing to hold the wound shut even as the lamb stirred and began to thrash and bleat in fear and pain, unable to understand that Malicia was healing its wound. For all that mattered.

Malicia exhaled as the edges finally finished shutting and sealed together well enough that moving around wouldn't tear it open again.

The butler clicked his tongue.

"You're too slow again." he declared with a sniff, as though Malicia hadn't been going as fast as she reasonably could. "Do you think that will be viable in a combat situation? You are going to have to try harder. You've also gotten your dress filthy again. Arrangements will be made to bring a new one in. This one will have to be burned, again."

"Would you have waited for me to change clothes?" Malicia huffed irritably.

"Of course not, silly girl. Sudden injuries do not await the healer's convenience." the butler chided.

Of course not. She had been lectured the first time that she wanted to change into an outfit she liked less before practice, after all. And despite that, the butler always made sure to frame the ruination of whatever outfit she had been wearing as her fault alone. As though if she just tried harder she wouldn't have needed to make a mess of herself fixing up whatever her newest 'patient' was.

"Well, we're done with this one." the butler declared, giving Malicia no time to move as his gloved fist came down.

There was a loud crunch of bone giving way as the beast's skull was crushed. Somehow, as he always managed it, blood splattered only in Malicia's direction and dripped down her face as she and the animal alike went still.

"Be sure to make yourself presentable, Miss Malicia." the butler instructed in passing, as he wiped the leather glove clean and put the limp carcass back into the sack for transport. "Your appearance as a member of nobility is important, after all."

Blood trickled down over Malicia's upper lip as he left. After a moment, the tip of her tongue darted out to flick across it.

After a few moments more, to be sure that he had gone, Malicia's red-streaked hand rose towards her face as she exhaled.

Lamb was served for supper in the Ravensworth estate that evening.