Harper takes a step back and slumps her shoulders.
"Sorry, I overstepped my boundaries." She hopped Lianna would understand that someone who is very rarely ever complicated would get overly excited by such prospects. Such thoughts were quickly dismissed though as she rushed to Heidi's age, making sure to support her as they exited the room.
"Thank you headmistress. Perhaps we can try and get the scholars to re-write the journal so we have multiple copies in case something happens to it as well." Exiting the passage, Harper looks around confused, looking back at Heidi.
"Do you think perhaps something happened while we were away?""Perhaps" Heidi said as another girl runs past them.
"Hey!" Lianna yelled trying to stop her.
"What's going on here, why is everyone scrambling?"The girl, one of Evaline's pupils stopped as she caught her breath.
"It's Miss Lei! Her and a few of her students were attacks while gathering herbs in the mountains. They're in the infirmary right now."Harper eyes widened a little when she heard the news.
"Oh my! Well, you need to get your wounds treated to Heidi. So we should go see what happened." Harper began heading towards the infirmary, wondering if what happened to Lei had anything to do with the demon they had temporarily released.
The three of them arrive at the infirmary as nurses and priestesses are tending to Lei and her two students. It doesn't look like what they went through had anything to do with the sealed demon. Instead, all three of them look as though they were just in a battle.
Their uniforms were cut up and their bodies were covered in bruises. But what was truly horrifying was that parts of their skin were tinted green. In Lei Xiulan, the sickly green tint went from her shoulders down to her elbows.
Arriving at the infirmary, Harper searched her brain for what could of caused such a thing, but came up blank, shaking her head, she decided to let people know Heidi had gone through something to.
"Heidi has been injured to! Not from the same thing however." Harper was somewhat glad that she hadn't caused whatever Lei and her students went through.
"What happened to those three?" She said referring to the Lei and her students.
Just as two of the nurses take Heidi to an open bed, Harper and Lianna manage to get a little closer.
"Look at this" Lianna says as she points to Lei's shoulder. Leaning in, Harper noticed what looks like two cut marks at the center of the infested skill.
"It appears all three of them have been poisoned" A voice said softly to the two of them. Turning to the source, they are meet with the head nurse, Miss Weatherbel.
Spoiler (click to show/hide):
A poison that turned skin green? That was a new one to Harper, sure there are plenty of poisons that cause skin lesions, gangrene like symptoms, or the likes but this was something different. Turning towards the head nurse, she sighed.
"Do we have any indication on who did it? They must be competent to be able to sneak up on or defeat Lei of all people."She shook her head in disappointment.
"No we have no clue who or what attacked them. To make maters worse, this poison is unlike anything I've seen. Neither my anti-venoms or the priestess's prayers seem to be effective. Though I'm more worried about Lei" She said looking at her arms.
" The poison along with the damage from battle have rendered them immobile. If we don't find a cure quickly, she'll lose the use of both her arms."Harper nodded along to what Weatherbel was saying, new poison that no one could cure, along with someone elite enough to take on Lei, chances were it was one of the rival churches, most likely the church of the black ocean.
"The black ocean are the only ones that really come to mind in this situation, a brand new poison out of nowhere and attacking on of our highest ranking members? It can't be just a rag-tag bunch of bandits or other small time criminals." Harper sighed, not liking speaking of the Black ocean in the church, but thinking it was necessary.
"Guo ... Xuegang" You hear Lei say softly from her bed.
"He .. is dangerous, a master of poisons." She said struggling to speak.
"And he's set his sights on the monastery." She said before passing out.
"Please you have to save your strength" Miss Weatherbel said as she got some water for the ill monk.
Just out of the corner of Harper's eye, she sees Heidi beckoning her. Well, at least they had a name. Harper walked over to Heidi, crouching next to her to listen to what she was saying better.
"I might be able to make something to counter act the poison. When I first met Lei Xiulan, she told me much about the medicines of her people. I've been studying them ever since." Heidi said as she sat up in her bed.
"I should have all the reagents I need in my study to concoct an anti-venom. I just need two items, Sanctified water from the spring south of the monastery, and venom from a red devil snake. They can be found in the northern mountain."Harper sighed in relief as Heidi said the first sentence. Hope was not lost, horray! As she talked Harper was surprised at how comparatively easy it sounded to make, there had to be a catch in the brewing process though. Sure if Harper fucked up getting the venom from a snake she'd feel like she was burning in hellfire till she died but givin the severity of the situation it was almost relieving it was only that. Harper nodded.
"In that case I will get onto gathering those ingredients right away, unfortunate we ran out of both of those not long ago in the stockpiles." It was really inconvenient timing, but that just meant Harper had to be fast. She didn't really want to go alone though, so, figuring maybe Lianna had a slightly better opinion of her now, she bounded over to her and explained what Heidi had told her, finishing off with,
"It would be much faster, and much safer if we went together, we both know how wild those devil snakes can get." She said, referencing a time a baby one had snuck into their dorms when they were young and caused a huge panic.
I hurt you, I heal you, I hurt you again. That's the pattern.