The Priesthood

Have you ever felt pain so potent that you would rather die than try to keep up with it?

Kanrel felt it pulsing from his stomach, as if getting repeatedly punched in the stomach had enough strength to make you gasp for air. Every second, this stab of pain came from somewhere around his stomach and pulsed through his body, making him scream in agony.

"Oh, shut up! I’m trying to focus here." Yviev hissed and got to work. She tried to find any external cause for the pain; at first, she didn’t seem to find anything, but slowly, around Kanrel’s stomach, there was an area much darker in color. Without hesitation, she lifted his robe enough so that she could peek under it.

"It would seem that there is a wound of sorts in your stomach; I’ll need to cut off a part of the patient's robes to be able to access the cause of his pain more easily.

I’ll be using a code that has the sole purpose of cutting his robes." She then quickly formed her code, and the others could soon see Kanrel’s naked stomach. Thankfully, he was wearing pants, so no one had to see more than they had bargained for.

"In the middle of the patient's stomach, there is a gaping wound that is oozing blood out."

"I will begin with stopping the bleeding and then reconstructing the organs, the flesh, the muscles, and then the skin of the victim; for this, I’ll be using multiple codes, but I will go one step at a time to avoid making mistakes."

She then began. Soon blood wasn’t oozing out anymore, and she removed the blood that was blocking her view to see in, all while Kanrel was shaking in agony, trying not to scream.

"There doesn’t seem to be that much damage to his organs." She narrated and then began healing the organs that had taken damage. All those around could see Kanrel’s stomach rapidly start regenerating, and soon enough there was no more wound.

Kanrel was still in pain, but this was just the aftereffect of what he had just gone through.

Kanrel was covered by white light, yellow light, and at last green light for one second each; Yvieve had succeeded in healing him.

Kanrel was finally allowed to move, so he got off the bed while holding his stomach in pain; he fell to the floor and crawled to a chair to sit down.

"You’re indecent," Yviev said, and he threw him the rest of his robes. Kanrel began forming codes to fix his robes for him. It would take a while before the pain would completely subside.

Uanna and Wen eyed him with something like worry on their faces, though it was difficult to say if they truly worried about him at all.

Yirn patted Yviev on the back to congratulate her and then got on the bed himself. "We haven’t got all day, so let’s keep this up for as long as we can; after everyone has had a go, we can take a break." He suggested. On the bed, he took his shirt and pants off. He lay down, and they could all see his highly defined body.

It was Wen’s turn, so together they used the code and began the simulation. Yirn was a different beast altogether. Though it was sure that pain ran through him, he refused to scream; he just gritted his teeth as his eyes bulged almost out of their sockets.

He trembled as his right hand disintegrated almost completely, leaving a roughly cut limb that Wen had to fix. She calmly started reciting her thought process and then began spewing out the codes she would use to fix his arm.

They all had a go, with so far only different types of injuries: a stab wound in the stomach, a missing hand, and a fractured femur that was sticking out of Yviev’s leg as Yirn did his best while trying to fix it.

On Wen’s turn on the bed, her chest and face were covered with burn marks, and she was in much more pain than any one of them had been thus far. Uanna seemed a little panicked at first but managed to make Wen’s pain go away, and then she managed to fix her skin to its former glory.

And then, at last, it was Kanrel’s turn to operate. Uanna lay on the bed; she seemed to be quite scared. "Be gentle with me." She begged no one in particular.

They again used the code, and then Kanrel placed his hand on Uanna’s forehead. Soon it began. She trembled for a while, but she didn’t scream out of agony. Though she did let out a slight moan of pain.

He then began looking for external injuries: "The patient doesn’t seem to be in much pain, and there doesn’t seem to be much external injury as far as I can tell; I will have to remove the patient's robes to be able to observe more closely."

He then formed a code that would cut Uanna’s robes from the side so that he could just lift them out of the way and lift them back later on. On her body, there didn’t seem to be any injuries, not even bruises; he then covered her body again with the robes.

"There are no externally visible injuries, which means that there is the possibility of a hair fracture, but the lack of pain suggests that this is not the case."

"Firstly, I will lift the patient's arms and legs while slightly pressing down on them to find the source of the slight pain."

He did so, but there was no reaction to him doing that other than the intense gaze with which Uanna observed what he was doing.

"Secondly, I will open the patient's mouth and see if the source of pain is there." He gently put his arm under her neck, and with the other hand, he slowly opened her mouth. There he found what he figured to be the cause of her pain: a tooth that had started rotting; the gums around it were red in color, which seemed to be caused by inflammation.

He then described what he had found out and began explaining the codes that he would use to first remove the rotting tooth, heal the inflammation, and then form a new tooth.

He slowly began doing so; at first, Uanna let out slight moans of pain but then began to giggle while he treated her inflammation; this too ended as he began to form her new tooth. And soon enough, he was done with it.

The bed shone in white, then yellow, and lastly in green; while this was going on, he had already begun to use a code to fix the cut he had made to Uanna’s robes. She, on the other hand, got up and thanked the Angels for not making her suffer through any greater pain.

While standing up from the bed, she leaned closer to Kanrel.

"Thank you, Son of the Herald." She whispered in his ear before they got separated. He stood still for a moment and slightly touched the ear that she had whispered into. A year ago, he would’ve gone red and had many fantasies about Uanna and her beauty; now he wasn’t sure how he felt.

He cleared his throat and said, "So now a break, as Yirn had suggested?" The whole thing had taken them a little more than three hours, as in between each simulation they shared notes and their thoughts behind the choices that they had made.

"Great idea; we can further discuss our observations, codes, and more while having something to eat," Uanna said, while slightly gazing at Kanrel, she had a glitter in her eyes, and it wasn’t difficult to decipher the meaning behind it.

In the hospital, there was a cafeteria, as it was inconvenient for patients and their families to travel far away to get something to eat; it would be the same for the doctors and the nurses who worked at the hospital.

They got their tray of food and found themselves at an empty table; the food was, of course, nothing special as none of them could really enjoy it, but they ate either way. One gets quickly used to eating just for sustenance.

They then discussed Kanrel’s simulation and what his thought process was while first diagnosing and then treating Uanna.

"You know, I would accuse you of being a pervert if you weren’t wearing the same robes as I am." Yviev said, "Just removing the robes of a beautiful woman, then squeezing her body all around, all this without asking for consent."

Kanrel blinked his eyes. "You do have a point; one should never remove the clothes of another or touch another without permission, not the same way I did or the same way you did."

Yviev grinned her well-practiced grin and said, "If it had been Uanna touching you, you wouldn’t accuse her of such things."

Kanrel was silent for a moment, then said with a pondering tone, "Perhaps."

Yviev rolled her eyes. "Another one of your ‘perhapses’." She then got closer to him and whispered to him, "Such words might get you more than you bargained for." She then eyed Uanna, who was writing something in her notes.

Kanrel couldn’t help but swallow and then instantly began questioning himself. Why would he swallow? What was the reason behind that seemingly harmless action? He had no idea.

They then spent another hour or so discussing the different codes that they had used. Kanrel shared some ideas for improvement that he had figured out; he even wrote some of them down so that the others could copy them for their own purposes later.

Five hours had gone by, and they had been fruitful; another thirteen hours were left, so they returned to the simulation complex. And so began another round of simulations. They had decided to mix things up so that they would have someone else operate on them and someone else they operated on. This way, they figured there’d be more variety and no instances where someone would torture another repeatedly.

For this, Kanrel was most pleased; he really didn’t want to experience another round quite yet under the talented and torturous hands of a certain Miss Yviev.

The day went by, and it was more or less the same: Kanrel got to experience burn marks himself and got to heal another person's fractured arm. He figured that there would be a progression in difficulty and that things would get more complicated with each day of simulations.

They had dinner together and discussed some more, after which they went for the final round of simulations for the day. Which was just more of the same; they already knew what to expect, and even for Uanna, there was less nervousness whilst operating on her next simulation partner, who happened to be Yirn.

And then the day came to an end. Professor Forsvarn graced them with her presence. On her clothes, there was some blood, but she didn’t seem to mind it too much. She excused them and announced that tomorrow would be the same, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after the tomorrow of tomorrow; it all would be spent here, in those small simulation rooms, constantly performing more and more simulations.

This would go on for a week before she would have time to hold a lecture. A week from now, the lecture will be held within the simulation complex.

Kanrel was spent, and so were the other students. All of them had gone through considerable pain and agony throughout the day, not to mention the stress caused by the quick actions they had to take to "save" their patients.

After the first rounds of simulations, no one wanted their fellow novices to feel the same way that they had felt, so everyone tried their best to ease their pain during the simulation and quickly resolve the cause of it.

The simulations began to form a sense of camaraderie among the novices, as they all had to go through the same pain themselves.

It had been dark when they first arrived that day at the Academic Hospital, and it was dark when they left.

It was 9:15 p.m., and the regular students in the park could see as waves of tired novices walked past them without giving them much regard; their way made toward the southernmost building, where they would disappear out of sight.

Kanrel walked among them with just one thing in mind: a bed that would not bring him agony.