Tista Poisoning (2)

5

When Edico saw Lady Reece's bright red skin spiderwebbed with thick varicose veins, he immediately slammed Ubis into a mirror on the nearest wall, making it shatter and rain glass onto the floor. "What did you poison her with?!"

Ubis tried to speak, but he was gripping his throat too tightly, so he eased up and let the man wheeze. "Tell me!"

"Stop!" Lady Reece yelled, stumbling to the side of the toilet, wheezing and panting. "I didn't eat or drink anything. I just…." She lifted up her hands, and his eyes widened in shock. They were nearing the point of purple, with serrated marks moving up them.

How didn't I notice that? Edico thought in horror. Lady Reece had tista weed poisoning etched into her hands. He was bewildered. He scoured Moonlit Grove for clues about what dragged Lady Reece into the forest and didn't even see tista weed. Wait… when she fell.

Sara fell off her horse on the way to Helscope, and he remembered panicking, seeing tista weeds growing on the side of the road. He remembered being so relieved when she got up and there weren't any around her. Was he mistaken? How did things even get so bad? Tista weed only gets this bad if someone eats it.

She must've touched the bolwark after touching it…. He thought back to her eating the sausages during lunch. Direct contact. It was incredible she had held out as long as she did before getting sick. Sara was unbelievably resilient. Still, how didn't he notice?

Edico turned to Ubis, hoisting him off the ground and snapping his shoulder back into its socket. Ubis screamed. Edico didn't care. His eyes were cold as he said, "By order of King Escar, I order you to arrange a room and bring fresh water and towels to it. You are to be discreet and silent. What you've seen here never happened. Do you understand?"

Ubis grimaced, turning away. "Understood."

Edico didn't watch him leave. He knelt down and helped Sara back to the toilet. When he did, he felt his stomach churn. Her hand…. If she had simple tista weed poisoning, her body would be red hot from the forge, but it wasn't. It was dead cold, like a nighttime gust of wind in the Stralla Desert. It made him shiver. Mana deprivation…. He examined her body. It's even worse. How? I didn't feel any divination pulses….

Edico felt like someone had touched his lungs with their bare hands and pressed. What were you doing in here?

6

If an elixologist mixes tista weed with granla root, welrot, and wistlash extract, regulating mana siphoning while simmering it in a ventilated area, they get "tista log," a thick, yellow sludge that is molded like clay. Boiling it in ethanol under an apparatus releases the poisonous chemicals that cause severe poisoning, constricting blood vessels and causing them to pop. However, the resulting substance is a hard solid that needs to be humidified, broken apart, and cut with a filler to prevent it from granulating. Only then is it safe for consumption.

The problem was that only ranked elixologists could perform the tasks, and few elixologists got banned from guilds due to their value unless they committed heinous crimes. And even if someone found that person, the materials for making such a drug were more expensive than all the other plants with natural opioids. That's why even drug fiends stayed away from tista weed, and the Forest Fiends, as they were called, were a rare breed that was short-lived, like the junkies on Earth that turned to Krokodil and died standing up, track marks green and scaly, their flesh rotting from gangrene.

That's what a renowned elixologist explained to her years ago, but she still ate it anyway to ensure that no one knew that she made contact with Kyritus and Tiber. She was the only person who knew of the encounter, shutting out leaks, and Edico believed she was in Alexbrook hurling her guts out, so he couldn't report it to the king. Even if Edico suspected, he didn't know where she went or what she did, and the adventurers didn't know who she was since the Escaran kingdom was hiding the heroes' existence (as they were budding weapons of mass destruction). As for the reason she did so quickly and riskily, it was to ensure that even if she died or King Escar locked her up like he did Jason, Tiber could eat a leaf and live a relatively-tyrexis-free existence. That said, she regretted it. Oh, yes. She regretted it. She'd rescind that regret two days later when her pale, vein-stricken skin turned smooth and tan again. But right then, writhing on the floor as she pulled herself to the toilet, vomiting all the water in her body until dehydration threatened to take her life in a seedy guest room bathroom of a past enemy, she regretted it.

Healing magic mends—it can't replace—and getting rid of tista weed poisoning requires a person to shed their entire stomach lining for the cause. So she was shit out of luck on the healing front, even if she snuck away to heal herself and would be out for days.

Yet Sara endured. She had suffered far worse over the years, to the point that trauma was commonplace, and normalcy made her feel anxious and uncomfortable, wondering when the hell would return. So she gritted her teeth and bore it, forcing water down her throat every time Edico offered it and not complaining when he stripped off her shirt and washed her with a cold cloth. Sara was forged in the pits of hell, and she could handle it. And so she did, weaving in and out of consciousness for two days until she awoke on the third, thirsty. Instead of asking for water, she simply crawled out of bed and walked to the sink, rinsing out her mouth and drinking.

"Lady Reece!" Edico said, jumping off the chair he was sleeping in. "Lay back down. You're in no shape to stand."

Sara turned to him, clearly standing as if saying: Does it look like I can't stand? If anything, she felt better than before. Two days had naturally healed the chaffing, and Edico had fed her enough anti-poisons and health and mana restoration elixirs to restore her to prime condition. It was mostly dehydration and fasting that kept her down for another day. Tista poisoning was one hell of a ride. "We need to leave. The Golden Trial is in three days, and I still haven't established a core."

Edico scoffed. "You think you're in any shape to develop a core?"

"Not right now, but I will be after a half day's ride," she replied, ignoring his water cup, drinking from the sink. That left his cheek muscles twitching, but she didn't care. Accepting niceties from someone during times of crisis puts them in control, and Sara didn't have that luxury.

The Golden Trial brought out patrons willing to provide strength-building resources in exchange for a percentage of the treasures brought back from quests and missions. In her last life, Jason got the most resources by a wide margin, boosting his power unbelievably quickly. Between screwing all the other heroes out of a golden core and the resources, he was capable of taking over the kingdom even without Qualth, the God Slayer sword.

In this life, all the resources in the world wouldn't let him scratch her any time soon. However, if he got those resources, he'd solidify a political and economic position within the kingdom. If she wanted to prevent history repeating without breaking Jason's neck, she needed to go to the trial and collect all the resources she could get her hands on. The alternatives ranged from inhumane to lethal, and she'd rather not have more things resting on her already tainted conscience.