1 One Stormy Night

The Kingdom of Ignis, 1673

—

It had been a stormy Saturday night: the sisters had gone to bed early to prepare for church services the next day while Sybil stayed up late cleaning. All of a sudden, a huge bang echoed through the room. She quickly turned towards the sound and saw that a man had flung open the doors of the church, and was stumbling forward in Sybil’s direction.

Her first instinct was to take a few steps away because he was a man that Sybil had never seen before, and she didn’t know if he was dangerous. After all, who came storming into a church this late at night if not a thief? It wasn’t until she got over her initial shock and heard him speak, that she realized the severity of the situation.

“Please...help,” he choked out as he fell to his knees.

Sybil threw away all her inhibitions and ran towards the man to catch him before his head could hit the hard ground. She made it over to him just in time as she threw herself on her knees and wrapped her arms around his back in an attempt to hold him upright.

The man was clad in metal armour and had a sword that was covered in filth hanging at his side. It wasn’t until Sybil moved her hands to hold his arms so that she could back away and take a better look at him that she realized that he was soaked in blood.

He was badly injured from a gash on the top of his head and a wound in his side, and if he didn’t get help soon, she was afraid that he might bleed out and die.

The man could barely keep his eyes open as he was fighting losing consciousness, and his breaths were labored. Sybil knew he was about to pass out completely, and she tried to think quickly on what she should do because he was far too large for her small frame to carry by herself.

“You’re safe here, it’s going to be alright,” Sybil told the stranger in the calmest voice she could muster although her heart was racing. “I need to get you to a bed so I can help you. Can you stand? You can lean on me.”

Upon hearing Sybil’s voice, the injured man opened his eyes and tilted his head up slightly to meet her gaze, causing Sybil to gasp. His eyes were the shade of dark honey, and they reminded Sybil of embers in a fire. She had never seen anyone with eyes like that, and she was taken by surprise at how captivating they were.

“I— I think I can,” the man struggled to say, pulling Sybil from her momentary daze. He moved one of his legs so that his foot was planted firmly on the ground, and a groan left his lips from the pain.

Sybil didn’t take her hands from him while the man threw his arm around Sybil’s shoulders for support and placed his other hand on the top of his knee to use as a pushing point to help him get on both feet.

He clenched his jaw together and Sybil watched as sweat started to bead at his forehead. He at first held his breath, but a slight yelp came out of him when he used every last bit of strength he had to stand. Once he was back on his feet, his breaths became heavy, and he put a lot of his weight on Sybil since he could not carry himself.

They started slowly walking towards the back corner of the church, and Sybril wracked her brain on where she could possibly take him. Not knowing what else to do, she helped him limp over to her bedroom, where she knew she would be able to best hide him from whoever had clearly been trying to kill him, should this person come looking.

With each step, the man grunted in pain, and Sybil hoped and prayed that they wouldn’t wake the sisters up. If Sybil was going to prevent this man from losing too much blood and dying, they couldn’t be awake to watch her work on him.

Once they made it to her bedroom, she helped to ease him onto her bed. The blood and dirt on him immediately stained her perfectly white sheets. His face twisted and pinched as he laid back onto the pillows, and Sybil ran to the washroom in an attempt to find things to help clean and bandage his wounds.

Sybil gathered her supplies and rushed back over to him just as he lost consciousness. She knew she had to work fast if she was going to save him.

Sybil looked over him and quickly assessed his injuries. Since he seemed to be bleeding more from the wound in his side, she knew that she had to treat that area first. She fumbled around and unfastened the chest piece of his armour so that it wouldn’t be in her way. It was then that she saw his shirt had completely turned red from blood, and stuck to him as it mixed with sweat. Needing that out of the way, she held tightly to it and yanked to rip it in two.

After there was no barrier between her and his wound, she dipped a towel in water and started to clean the stab wound. As she washed away some of the blood, she saw how dirt had already made its way inside the cut, and she grabbed a bottle of wine to use as an antiseptic to clean it since it was the only alcohol the church had.

He woke up and screamed in pain when she poured the wine on his wound, and she jumped forward to clasp her hand over his mouth.

“I know it hurts, I’m so sorry,” she sympathetically said to him, “But I need you to stay quiet, please. I’ll remove my hand, but you can’t scream anymore. I’m so sorry.” The man slowly nodded his head as he continued to stare deep into Sybil’s eyes. She moved away from his face, but offered him the wine to take a sip from. “It’s not strong, but it might help with the pain.”

Sybil held the bottle up to the man’s mouth and watched his adam’s apple bob as he took a sip. Some of the wine escaped his lips and dribbled down his mouth, and without thinking, Sybil used her sleeve to wipe it away. The man’s eyes flickered from her hand back to her eyes, and the intensity of them made Sybil blush.

She went back to looking at his side as she tried to think quickly on what to do. She had never seen a wound that large, and she wasn’t sure she would be able to clean it well enough to prevent infection.

While she struggled to think, the man had fallen unconscious again, and that’s when Sybil realized what she had to do. She placed both her hands over his wound and delicately touched his skin. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing as she pulled from the force within her. Water began to dance around her fingers, and she used the magic from inside her to help care for the wound.

For as long as Sybil could remember, she had lived in the local church under the care of its three nuns. She used to have a family, or so she was told, but she didn’t remember them. Her parents were a young couple who were simple farmers, but when Sybil was just four years old they both died of influenza, leaving their only daughter behind.

When they passed, everyone pitied the little orphan girl who was now left completely on her own. Sister Mary felt it was her duty as a woman of God to care for the child, and she convinced the other two nuns, Sister Elizabeth and Sister Margaret, to take Sybil in and raise her.

Now twenty years old, Sybil had grown up to be a compassionate and kind young woman. She was a very sheltered girl who spent every day at the church and rarely would leave. She never really had friends growing up, other than the sisters, and her only other human contact was with the people who would come to church services on Sundays.

So maybe those were some of the reasons why she never told anyone about the secret she had.

When Sybil was eight years old, she had been playing outside in the gardens when her foot caught in a ditch, causing her to fall and scrape her knees. Afraid of getting in trouble for not being careful and for running around, she sat on the ground and held her bleeding knees as she cried when all of a sudden, her hands felt wet.

Thinking the blood had started to pool out of her injuries, she opened her eyes and stared in shock at the sight before her. Water from the fountain next to her had somehow come to surround her hands and knees. Sybil pulled her fingers slightly back and watched as the loose skin started to mend itself with the help of the water. It only took a couple of seconds before her knees looked as they did before, with no trace that she had ever scraped them.

Although magic was common in Ignis and its surrounding kingdoms, Sybil had never heard of anyone outside of noble families who had the ability to wield it. Thinking that the sisters might think that she was cursed with dark magic and would send her away as a result, Sybil vowed to never tell anyone about her magical powers that she had discovered that day.

And she kept that vow by only ever using her powers to heal herself. At least, that was until the night he came crashing into the church.