Chapter 6: Rui (part 1 of 2)

  Under a clear starry sky and surrounded by open nature for the first time in my life, my primary concern was to make myself fall asleep.

  I was in Pelepas, a lumber and shipping outpost at the mouth of Pulai River. For about the twentieth time tonight, I turned over on the thin straw bedroll given to me by Silver Crane. The layer of cotton padding that purportedly separated my back from the hard ground did not seem to do much for me. I tried in vain to find a position where it didn't feel like at least one part of my body was being crushed to oblivion.

  Around me slept the Silver Crane party members, completely untroubled. Boonie especially was snoring almost as loudly as he rang his nunchaku during a fight, which only added to my predicament. These adventurers were simply a different breed.

  Up until now, this day had been nothing short of astonishing. From the moment the gates opened onto a bridge over the Golden Strait, to trekking alongside the pearly sands on the southern edge of the peninsula, to coming into Pelepas, the only sign of human intervention in a wide expanse of lush jungle—every sight, sound, and smell had been exquisite and edifying. Just beyond the walls within which I had spent my whole existence lay a rich, vast tapestry of colour, texture, and life. It was enough to make one disregard the bumps on the wagon ride, though my back and buttocks were sorely reminded of them now.

  After the twenty-first fruitless attempt to find purchase for sleep, I finally sat up with an exasperated grunt and looked around. On one side of me was Darsik, bed cover thrown off and limbs splayed out wildly in an odd contrast to his taciturn and minimalist demeanour during the day. On the other side, Lucy lay on her back, straight as a board and tucked neatly inside her cover. For all her energy and spontaneity, she had always been an impeccable sleeper. My eyes scanned out further and I nearly jumped to my feet when I saw a shadowy, upright figure a few yards away. I realized it was Boonie, who was somehow simultaneously sitting up cross-legged and snoring at an implausible volume. Knowing that no sleep was forthcoming any time soon, I decided that perhaps a short stroll would help loosen my stiff joints.

  The settlement at Pelepas was roughly the size of Central Temasek Hospital in its entirety, and encircled by wooden palisades. Our assigned campsite was near the southwestern corner and therefore close to the river. As I stepped out of Boonie's radius, I could begin to make out the sounds of the flowing river.

  Before stepping out of Temasek—where I had only encountered sewage canals or garden creeks—I had not fully appreciated that listening to water could make me feel such serene humility. The sound mixed with the chirping of insects and the occasional hoot of an owl. I imagined my ancestors rowing downstream on Pulai River, intimately familiar with the natural world and able to feel its every breath on their skins, a state of being that was now unknown to nearly all of their descendants. My chest tightened and I felt my eyes grow hot.

  I had now spent nearly an entire day outside but had yet to run into Malady scares that surely abounded in these parts. The party had pointed out tracks left by Fire-macaques on the coastal sands, but we completed the first leg of our journey unmolested while I remained securely tucked away on the wagon. It hadn't fully sunk in that I was now operating in territory where Maladies could swoop in at any moment. Yet it was a matter of hours before the group would be actively seeking out a mammoth-class malady, deep within the untamed jungle. Once I remembered that, I felt more awake than ever.

  I came upon the southwestern portion of the palisades, not fifty steps from where I had lain sleepless. I had original planned to do a wide lap around the campsite before trying to turn in again, but I noticed murmurs of conversation from above. A watchtower had been built into this part of the walls, and I looked up to see that there was torchlight spilling from the platform above. As I walked closer, I recognized one of the voices to be Prisha's, the gallant Lancer with whom I might have been a little bit smitten. The other, less familiar voice belonged to a man. They spoke softly and I couldn't quite make out the contents of their speech, but I did catch snippets. In particular, 'hound' and 'pattern' certainly grabbed my curiosity.

  I stood there a while, looking up at the flickering torchlight and debating whether I should climb up and try to eavesdrop. Just then, the conversation stopped and a head poked out over the platform.

  "Is that... Rui?" a female voice called down, and I could see Prisha squinting on the half of her face that was lit by torchlight. "What are you doing up?"

  "Oh... sorry, I couldn't sleep. Thought maybe a walk might help."

  Prisha smiled and nodded, seeming to show that she understood. "Would you like to join us? We have lychee tea."

  "Oh... well, I wouldn't want to intrude."

  She smiled again, this time seeming to say, suit yourself, and disappeared out of view. After a while, the murmurs began anew, and I told myself to stop standing there like an idiot and turn back to my listless walk.

  But before I knew it, I was climbing the ladders leading up to the platform, mildly alarmed by how rickety the rungs turned out to be. After a harrowing effort, I emerged at the top, more than mildly out of breath.

  Prisha and her companion both sat in stools and now fixed their eyes on me as I came up. Her companion was a brawny Hongtoonese man with braided, shoulder-length hair. I recognized him as the current in-charge of the Silver Crane detachment at Pelepas but couldn't remember his name. He now watched me in amusement as I awkwardly pulled myself up onto the platform and scrambled to my feet.

  "Hello," I panted. "I, uh... changed my mind. Lychee tea sounds lovely. And it might help me sleep."

  Prisha indicated an empty stool across from her. She then turned to a small cabinet in one corner of the platform and began pouring. I sat down, still breathing heavily and increasingly conscious of the man's stare. I stuck my hand out, more out of necessity than politeness. "Hello, I'm Rui. I'm travelling with—"

  "I know who you are, doc," the man said. He didn't seem interested in taking my hand, though the amused look he trained on me didn't seem to have any malice behind it. "Though frankly, I still don't know why you're here."

  "Be nice, Asifoa. Rui is here at Mr Seah's invitation. I told you that already."

  Prisha handed me the tea and I resigned to receiving it with the hand I had offered for Asifoa to shake. I had already grown accustomed to adventurers not behaving in line with my preconceptions of societal norms. This man was already a marked improvement over Boonie simply due to the distinct lack of a sneer. I allowed myself to relax and sip the lychee tea, which was just the right temperature but a smidge over-sweet for my tastes.

  "Heh. Remind me again why Mr Seah wanted this shrimp to come along?"

  I continued to sip my tea. Apparent transgressions like this example no longer fazed me. I made myself believe that the likes of Asifoa said these things as factual observations rather than expressions of contempt. While I wouldn't call myself short, I was admittedly built like a twig compared to most of these adventurers.

  "We've just been talking about this," Prisha reminded her companion, a picture of her usual calm and authority. "You know as well as anyone that we're seeing deadlier Malady encounters than before. Mr Seah feels we need outside eyes, experts from other fields to weigh in on the issue and help us come up with solutions. Rui is just the first step to that project."

  "And you, doc? How'd you let yourself get dragged into this, eh?"

  "I... asked, actually. I wasn't even aware you guys had been looking for someone to do this."

  There was a beat, followed by booming laughter that would have given Ihaka Tangaroa a run for his money. I jumped and looked around in alarm, convinced that the sound had woken the whole settlement and who knows what else outside the palisades. Asifoa wiped a few tears as he turned to Prisha. "Not only is he puny, he's crazy in the head too, eh! Some first step you've found for us."

  I recalled something Boonie had said during the departure briefing and told myself to just roll with the punches. Some of the patients I dealt with at the hospital were frequently belligerent, demented, delirious, or sometimes all of the above. This was nothing I hadn't experienced before. I sipped while waiting for the adventurer's laughter to die down, then cut in when I could be heard. "I'd be interested to compare some notes with you, Asifoa. Have you noticed any changes or oddities in Malady behaviour during your time here?"

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Eh, maybe some of them beasties are getting bolder than usual," he shrugged. "Did have a rash of attacks on the lumber mill that got some people scared and talking. Been posting more patrols that way and we haven't seen much excitement since. Who knows, maybe there's something funny in the water around here, eh?"

  "Attacks from what?"

  "Eh, dogs mostly. Some cats. Sometimes monkeys. Nothing we can't handle, you know?"

  In my head, I translated that to Jungle-hounds, Barongs, and Fire-macaques, all tiger-class or pixie-class Maladies that normally acted in packs or small groups. This seemed to fit with my own collection of data from disparate sources. "Have you communicated this with other adventuring companies? Have they reported anything similar?"

  It was Prisha who answered, her eyes on me steady. "Mr Seah has been trying to organize an inter-agency committee for months. Though the other companies have been... less than receptive."

  "There are some data I wanted to discuss with you, but I don't have them with me," I said eagerly, referring to the bundles of notes I'd originally packed for the trip but ended up leaving in storage back at the Silver Crane headquarters. "I have reason to believe the Malady problems you guys are dealing with are shared Temasek-wide. Adventurer fatalities are on the rise, and a lot of it look to be due to Maladies behaving in unusual patterns. Do you have... um, adventurer friends from other parts of the city that you talk to about this stuff?"

  At this question, my own set of adventurer friends for the night exchange a look between them.

  "Half the year I'm out in this dump," Asifoa declared, chuckling. "The other half I want to spend as little time as possible thinking or talking about adventures."

  This piece of personal revelation did not easily resonate with me. If I got to do what Asifoa did for a living and got to see the splendours of the outside world every day, I'd likely be going out of my way to bring it up in conversation. But I supposed there were people in any field for whom a job was just a job.

  "I don't either, unfortunately," Prisha chimed in, though she had the grace to sound sincerely regretful. "I probably should. We all probably should, but life at Silver Crane can be quite hectic. On off days, it's usually all we can do to focus on recovery."

  This I could sympathize with. There were times after a long shift at the hospital, especially when coming off a gruelling chaos hour, where I had fallen asleep at my tiny dining table mid-bite. Such seemed to be the typical life of a professional in Temasek: long, hard work punctuated by isolated recovery. It really was difficult to find the time or energy to catch up friends, let along seek out those from outside our districts.

  "I can understand that," I offered. "Even for us medical folk, it's rare to maintain close communication with other hospitals in the city. We do have publications—assuming anyone's reading them—and a conference or two once in a blue moon. But I don't think we're doing nearly enough to uphold Imhotep's ideals."

  Asifoa's eyes glazed over. Even Prisha frowned slightly. "I'm sorry, Imho...?"

  "Imhotep. The First Doctor? From Kemet?" I was genuinely surprised that they didn't know about him. He was the first human to lead a response against the Malady threat nearly three thousand years ago, and also the first to concoct the basis of our understanding of both Magic and Medicine. Within circles familiar to me, he was sort of a big deal. Did adventurers not learn about this stuff? "Other than being the progenitor of Magic, he was also famous for placing great importance on spreading his teachings beyond Kemet. He himself spent nearly half his life travelling the continents, sharing his knowledge with any community he came across, and his disciples continued his legacy after he passed. It's not a stretch to say that hubs wouldn't exist and function the way they do today if it weren't for Imhotep's work."

  "He sounds like someone I should learn more about," Prisha said gravely. She seemed to take this gap in her knowledge to heart. "I should like to read about him. Will you tell me more when we get back to the city? Point me to some resources?"

  Prisha's approval, garnished with an invitation for future correspondence, made my heart skip a beat. I concentrated hard on erasing the vapid grin that tried to appear on my face.

  "Of course. I'd love to," the words came out frightfully higher-pitched than I meant for them to. I coughed and buried my reddening face in tea. When I looked up, Asifoa was staring at me intently, brow creased in contemplation. When he spoke, his levity from earlier had faded somewhat.

  "You know, doc, all this talk about going around and sharing knowledge... reminded me of something. Musta been nearly ten months ago now, on my previous rotation.

  "That lumber mill just next to the river... you might have seen it in the daytime but it's got its own ring of fences around it. Dunno what it is about a bunch of men sweating their balls off under the sun, but it sure makes Barongs want to come out, even during the day when they oughta be napping. We watch over the mill when the men are working but we usually leave them cats alone. The fences are too high for them to jump over and... why waste arrows on what don't pay the bills, you know?

  "Anyway, this one time, one cat did manage to climb over. We didn't know this until later, but turns out there was a spot next to the water where the fence was sinking into the soil, tilted it just enough for one of them to get through. Imagine our surprise when a Barong casually rocks up in the middle of the mill. Luckily, I was one of the first ones to spot it so it didn't live long enough to cause real trouble.

  "The next day, though, a whole family of the damn things showed up. Caused a right mess, that lot. And this time, I saw with my own eyes where the cats were jumping in from. We took down the whole lot without casualty but... well, they got to one of the young lads at the mill before we could finish them off."

  Asifoa paused his story, his eyes pointed vaguely in my direction but seeing something far away. It took me a moment to fully process the implications of his last statement. He had said there was no casualty, in the same breath with which he described the death of one of the mill workers. Did civilian deaths not reckon into casualties? Yet looking at him now, it was clear that he was heavily affected by the death of a young man on his watch. I glanced at Prisha who, for me, had become a sort of barometer for adventuring cultural norms. She showed no signs that her companion had said anything untoward. Asifoa continued.

  "We reinforced the fence. Do regular checks now to make sure something like that doesn't happen again. I'd forgotten about it 'til now, but I did wonder at the time," he then locked eyes with me, seeking but not expecting an answer. "We killed that first Barong before it got out. How did the rest of the family know to look for the same weak spot? Let's just assume it couldn't've somehow communicated from the grave. How did every one of the Barongs that attacked on the next day know to head straight for that dip in the fence? It's almost like something... or someone out there taught them to do that."

  This idea seemed to tickle him and he boomed out a short laugh, abruptly dropping his serious air. Next to him, Prisha frowned again. As for myself, I found the thought to be downright chilling. With my personal research, I had always assumed that the changing patterns in Malady activity spoke to learned behaviours, a kind of adaptation to how adventurers had dealt with them for centuries. My mind would never have gone to the possibility that the behaviour could be somehow passed on... telepathically? If this weren't an isolated incident, the problem was direr than I had first imagined.

  A gust of wind blew in, causing the torchlight to flicker and sending an unseasonable chill through the air. I shuddered slightly and reached instinctively for the tea, though it had cooled by then. My eyes met Prisha's; she was still wearing that frown of concern.

  "How do you guys do it?" I found myself blurting out a question that, until this moment, I didn't know I had. Now that I had breathed it into being, I realized that it was a thought I had been harbouring for years—ever since Lucy told us that she was going into Field Medicine. "Death staring at you in the face. How do you remain calm and know what to do when a pack of Barongs are charging at you, at your friends, at the people under your protection?"

  Asifoa put his amused smile back on as he turned to me. Prisha's frown faded as she considered my question for a moment. I began to think perhaps I had hit upon something personal and uncomfortable, and was relieved to hear the earnestness in her response. "I can only speak to the first part of your question because the truth is, we don't always know if we're doing the right thing, if we're making the right choice. In the heat of the moment, we don't have tiem to analyze and evaluate; that's what debriefings are for. But despite not always knowing what to do, I can remain calm because I know that I'm the most qualified person to make such decisions."

  It wasn't bravado or arrogance. A common theme among the Silver Crane adventurers—whether they laughed, sneered, or grumbled, whether they were a slouching grouch, a brooding youth, or a gallant beauty—something all of them held to without fail was to be the purveyor of truth, direct and absent frills.

  "Out here, I am the most highly educated, well-trained, and richly experienced representative of our city. Therefore I have not only the authority but also the imperative to make decisions and execute them. If I stop to wonder, if I freeze in the decisive moment... then who? Who would make those decisions if not me? I trust in my training, and I trust in myself. Because I know—when push comes to shove—no one is more trustworthy than myself."

  I was reminded of my most recent round of the chaos hour, of the unconscious Ranger rushed into the imaging room. For all of my insecurities, when the moment came, I took charge. I did not defer to the eminently senior Neurologist; I did not look to the wiser and calmer Shareef. I was the Radiologist in the room, and if a dying patient's brain needed scanning, I was the only qualified person to do it. When push had come to shove, my responsibility had pushed out my fears.

  "Come, Rui," Prisha beckoned as she stood, putting a companionable hand on Asifoa's shoulder. "My abundant experience and training tell me we should both head back and catch some shuteye while we still can. We're going to need it."