Dinah didn't have a lot to do because Syryn was disinclined to have a bumbling priestess ruin his experiment. It was times like these that he wished Salem was around. Setting aside the unproductive thoughts, the alchemist added his reagents to the tubes and stuck labels on them for future identification. All of the tubes then went inside one of the empty chests that had previously contained utensils.
When it was time for dinner, Syryn wasn't very hungry but he had an extra serving of a savoury meat pie that Akida baked using hot coals.
-----
"Akida, what's this? Porridge without fruits? There are a few dried dates and a couple of nuts floating in it. I can't eat this!" Palate ruined by the guard's excellent cooking, Syryn's morning was ruined just as bad when he found out what breakfast consisted of.
"It's your own damn fault for eating every single piece of the fresh fruits we had," Akida answered as his knife came down swiftly on a struggling fish that had been delivered to them in a bucket.
The chastised but unrepentant alchemist quietly ate his breakfast and wandered off to check on his samples. He hoped that a sufficient amount of time had passed for the effects of the reagents to become visible.
One glance at the samples and Syryn was swallowing down his excitement. His efforts had not been wasted.
All the samples showed varying degrees of small changes but what stood out the most were two glass tubes - both displaying white streaks on the glass. The streaks were thin and powdery. The alchemist giddily checked the labels on the test tubes.
Insect - advanced
Grey Nodules
He had finally found the connection he was looking for. The leaf and pollen samples also exhibited white streaks but they were almost invisible to the naked eye. This meant that the entire plant was infected by the grey nodules that caused the mass death of insects and had equally devastating effects on humans. All that was left to do was to connect the nodules to the deaths of the three unlucky villagers.
"What's the verdict?" Dinah asked the alchemist.
"Guilty. Execution by fire after I take cuttings of the trumpets."
----
Syryn was sipping on tea at the headman's house while Dinah explained to him why they had to exhume the hunter's body.
"It simply cannot be done, priestess," he wiped his sweaty forehead with a cloth. "His soul would be displeased if we desecrated his place of burial!"
Syryn was already making plans for how to steal the body when the villagers were asleep. He would require the muscular arms of the village healer to dig up the body. Akida also had to come just in case they were caught digging by a nosy villager.
While Syryn plotted, a villager barged into the garden and informed the headman of terrible news.
"Cami has passed away and her mother has gone crazy! She's refusing to let the body be taken away for cleansing."
To dig up a grave or to cut open a child? The headman looked at Syryn with indecision in his eyes. They were both thinking the same thing.
"There's only one way to definitively prove that the deaths were caused by culprits of the same source. Make your decision and let me know which body I can have. I'm leaving tomorrow, headman. It is all up to you." The alchemist stood up to leave.
Dinah did not envy the pressure that Syryn had just placed on the headman's shoulders. He would have to convince the grieving family members to let Syryn cut their deceased child open. If not that, it meant breaking tradition and overcoming superstition to exhume a dead body.
----
After coming back from the headman's house, Syryn spent a lazy afternoon parading around shirtless. Having spent an hour doing laundry for himself and Lucien, the alchemist was feeling the heat, the reason for his shirtless state of affairs. The clean clothes he had worked hard on were wrung out and hung onto tree branches that received maximum solar insolation.
Dinah, a spectator of the domestic situation at the Nigh'hart cabin, shook her head at the oblivious teenager. Syryn had his hair up in a ponytail but a few wayward strands of the silky tresses were stuck to his glistening skin which had a light pink tinge from sunning for too long. Beads of water rolled down between his shoulder blades after Syryn dunked an entire bucket of water on himself to cool down.
Rei and Akida were both respectfully averting their sights away from the teenager. They made it a point to look anywhere else but at Syryn. Men going shirtless was a frequent and normal development on hot days, but when Syryn did it, everything suddenly became more scandalous. Neither could understand why it was different when Syryn was the one who went shirtless. They all had the same body parts so why was the teenager giving off such an ambiguous aura?
The avians blessed themselves by invoking the names of whatever deities they worshipped. Eyes firmly planted on their chores, they managed to get through the afternoon without having any impure thoughts.
"Akida, fancy some grave digging?" Syryn was now decent and the guard could look at him without feeling weird about it.
"No," the avian replied. The fish that had been marinating for hours was ready to be cooked. Akida was looking for the sprig of mint that Syryn had been stealing out of.
"I can pay you extra. Gold, favours, a boon, whatever you ask for." Syryn wouldn't have insisted if he wasn't so averse to handling the bodies of little children.
The alchemist leaned back against the cooking station and got in the way of Akida's endeavours to find mint. "Are you superstitious?" He asked the frustrated avian.
"Did you eat all the mint?" Akida asked the teen.
"Answer my question first."
The avian guard folded his arms against his chest and faced the young healer who was determined to make his life harder than it should have been. From the day that he had arrived, Akida had been stressed out about how Syryn kept disappearing off without a chaperon, exposing himself to the god awful disease that he was investigating though it had nothing to do with him, and all of that without taking into account how Syryn used him to threaten and intimidate unsuspecting villagers.
"Whose grave do you want to dig up, and why? Tell me that first."
"The hunter," Syryn answered. "He's got the devil in his brain."
"What time?" Akida had a feeling Syryn would do it with or without him.
"Midnight. It's the best time to disturb a grave because that's when the ghosts are out haunting the living. They won't know that we're stealing their bodies."
It was a load of bullshit and Akida knew it. "Did you finish all the mint?"
"Mint? I ate a few. Is there none left?" Syryn asked as if he didn't know that the entire sprig had gone into his stomach. It was a refreshing plant to chew on when he felt hot.
"The mint is all gone. You get plain fish for dinner."
Syryn slunk out of the kitchen cabin knowing that Akida had seen him eating the mint. Knowing how good the avian's skills were, Syryn was sure that even plain fish would taste good if Akida's magic hands touched it.
----
"Dinah, dont you have anything better to do than hang around men younger than you? Or are you interested in Gosan? I have to warn you though, he's married."
The sun wasnt going down fast enough for Syryn. Midnight seemed like years away. His boredom and impatience were reasons for annoying the long-suffering woman beside him. They were both sitting on the grass and peeling the skin off potatoes.
"Dinah, I'm talking to you- Din-!!!"
Syryn let out a hiss of pain and looked down at his smoking skin. He couldn't believe what he was seeing - the priestess had branded him like cattle.
"What have you done?" He whispered in fear. A symbol that looked like the flames of a red fire was burnt into the skin of his shoulder after Dinah had touched it.
"Matching tats. Welcome to the fold of the fire temple, Syryn," Dinah said to him with all the enthusiasm of potato peeling.
Syryn saw the same fire emblem on her shoulder and he was aghast. "How is this not a crime?!" He cried out. "You can't just recruit me against my will!"
"But I did."
"Your goddess will burn us both to ashes for this heresy!"
"Well, remember it the next time you decide to open your mouth and talk shit that your asshole would be so proud of."
"Priestess, tell me, am I going to die?"
Syryn feared anti mages. He also feared the wrath of the gods and goddesses. To have received the mark of Moira was a terrifying thing to a demon.
"So dramatic," Dinah drawled. "You won't die. Now that you're part of the fire temple, you'll be expected to perform the rituals that Moira demands."
"I will cut out my flesh if I have to," Syryn hissed at Dinah. "I want this thing off my skin."
"I can't do it," Dinah replied without emotion. "If you gouge out your flesh, it will just appear somewhere else. Will you disfigure yourself so? It's not all that bad, Syryn."
"Why?" He asked her. "I know you didn't just do it out of spite."
Dinah sighed and turned away from the furious teen. "It is Moira's will. What do I, a simple mortal, know about the whims of the immortals that rule the aether?"
"How eye-opening!" Syryn said as he laughed without humour. "Does your goddess have no worshippers that she must force an unwilling demon to join her flock?"
"I am but a messenger, Syryn. Moira has given you a year from now. Before the end of the year, you are to come to the temple of fire in Karnok."
"And if I refuse?" The alchemist coldly responded.
"Then we'll know what happens in a year." Dinah looked away, unable to face the teen who had every right to be angry about his new situation.
"Tell Moira that she'll have to drag me screaming and in chains if she wants me to show up at her temple."
Dinah smiled despite herself. She hadn't known him for long but it was just so Syryn-like to say that.
"Then prepare yourself, Syryn," she told him. "Moira will drag you to Karnok."
The alchemist was saved from replying to her when he spotted company. Villagers were approaching them and at the front of the group was the headman. Syryn cursed the day because he knew it had just gotten worse.
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