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The Lady in White

The Searing Plague

It started in the west, some fancy shindig where all the attendants wound up 6-ft under within a matter of days. Apparently the Dras went in to help out afterwards, assuming they were immune. The story goes that even they bit it in the end. All these were just rumors. For the first few months, we received stories told by the spare few traders moving through our tiny hamlet. We weren’t big or popular or on a main drag of the road but we got people in from time to time.

After the first month or so the stories stopped so we assumed it was just one of those tales that travelers tell to make themselves seem more important than they are like “I once sold a broach to the King of Bordweall!” or “Even the Queen of Ashland seeks out my spices!” Stories told with a knowing wink and a sly smile.

We didn’t see the first outbreak until well after the decimation of Winne Attema, after the libraries of medicine were open, and after the vast burnings within various main cities and kingdoms. A small group of strangers passed through our town, stopping only for water from one of our wells. That night, there was a great commotion in the fields in the direction that the strangers had gone. It sounded like a mix between intense jubilation and horrific slaughter. The stray dogs in the town fled from the sound, cats raised their hackles, and even the least superstitious of us said a silent prayer to their deity.

It wasn’t until midmorning that one of us dared to venture into the fields and what we found was beyond what any of us had envisioned this disease to be. The bodies were laid in a scorched part of the field as if someone had let the fire burn out of control over them. Every one of the strangers had the most gruesome smile on their skinless faces. Muscle showed to bone in places on their arms and legs where great slashes of skin had split apart. Each of them looked like they had fallen while dancing…

That’s when she came, the Lady in White. She appeared on the edge of the field, no one knew who she was and she didn’t come closer. That night the field area where the victims had burned was removed and replanted. Fresh water barrels appeared next to all the wells the next morning and for every morning after. The buckets had been removed from the wells so we could not get water from them, but the barrels had enough water for all of us for at least the day. Visitors reported being interrogated by a woman claiming to be a Sage and Protector of our hamlet. She was apparently accompanied by one of the fiercest Soldiers that anyone had seen. So fierce that no one dared lie or threaten her for fear of him.

If one of us fell ill or displayed signs of the plague, we would place a candle on their stoop and whisper prayers to the forest where the Lady had been first seen. The Lady in White would visit them in the night, administering the cure to those that she could and scooping up the bodies of those she could not. We were not completely spared in the pestilence that burned across our land but we did not feel the effects as severely as some of the other hamlets in our county.

Rumors of smaller, outlying towns and hamlets being abandoned as survivors fled to the safety and protection of the larger cities or kingdom centers. Of fake priests and saviors peddling snake oil and other false cures. Of true heroes and missionaries that brought comfort to the dying, cleaned the Souls of the diseased, and found cures for others. But for us? Life was quiet, simple, and ever the same.

At the end of the first year of the plague we all found a strange solution on our doorsteps, a tincture of vinegar and spirits, with instructions to apply liberally to everything. With this discovery, the homes of the fallen could be cleansed of the disease and made safe. However, the news coming from the west was still bleak as more than half of the people were either infected or had already passed. Ever more stories of death, deplorable acts by our fellow Mann, and a rumor that the bones of a Horathi would protect you from the plague. Each of these rumors were written in the chronicle of our hamlet and we would wake to other stories in the chronicle, stories of life, reaffirmation of faith in our fellow Mann, and corrections to the various rumors we heard. Fear was clearly visible on those few who dared travel during this tumultuous time and fatalism was winning out throughout the land.

It was in the third year that the best and the worst of Mann was seen. The worst came as an invitation from our Duke to visit his summer home a mere day’s walk from our little hamlet. We were warned about the prevalence of the new called Searing Parties where nobles and dignitaries would gather their friends, families, and county mates at their homes, lock the doors, and burn them all alive. But not all of us listened. The Mayor, our best rancher, the innkeeper, and their families left despite the warnings left by the Lady. They did not return but rumors were that a lady clad in white had opened the doors after they had been locked in an effort to save those inside from burning alive. Very few made it but her and her solider entered and saved those that they could again and again, battling the flames for as long as they could. The best was at the end of the third year when a Kypiq undertaker discovered a true method of stopping the disease. She called it Inoculation, the act of sharing blood with one who had the plague but survived or by one whose mother had survived the plague.

With this discovery the Lady in White seemed to disappear as mysteriously as she had appeared, or became again an unseen guide and protector of the hills. Every year or so a new child will claim to have discovered her home deep in the forest of the hills, a ramshackle homestead surrounded by a carefully tended garden, the tallest and most beautiful trees, and smelling of delicious sweets…


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