Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93267 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93267 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
In a stunning moment of clarity, he completely understood what they were saying. Why they were so anxious and excited to teach him, to make him one of them. He might very well be better put to use here than at his old hospital. It wasn’t like he was replaceable here.
The door opened and Ha Na waltzed in. “Oh, am I late? Did you start already?”
“Barely,” Amaru assured her, waving her into the chair next to Salem’s. “Still covering the basics of what all magic can do.”
Salem rubbed his forehead, feeling like he’d been given too many surprises all at once. “I thought my first talk with Sora covered all of this, but it turns out that was the summary of the summary, in a sense.”
“There’s so much to learn,” Amaru commiserated with him. “Sora’s still teaching me what he considers basics.”
“And I spent forty years with all the basics,” Sora tacked on. “So don’t rush, Salem. There’s time.”
Ha Na’s eyes bounced around the group, her face lighting up. “Oh! Oh, he’s staying?”
“I’m staying.” Salem said this firmly because he one hundred percent meant it. “I’m not returning to America. At least for the foreseeable future, until we hit a make-or-break point. Like hell will I do that after what happened with Gregori.”
Ha Na reached right over and hugged him, her hair smelling of citrus and sun.
“Thank you,” she whispered against his ear. “Thank you so much. For loving Gregori enough to change, but also for staying. My own children will need you in the future.”
“You think I’m better than these three?”
“Once you’re caught up, you will be.” She leaned back, releasing him, her smile warm and grandmotherly. “Trust me. Sora and Amaru wouldn’t be so excited to teach you otherwise. And you can still help the children while you’re learning. Really, learning is a lifetime endeavor. You never really stop.”
The truth of her words hit home. Salem believed this firmly as well. She was right, he shouldn’t look at it as “I can’t work until I’ve learned everything” but more of an apprenticeship. He’d learn while on the job. Although he’d definitely be cramming the basics in first.
“Speaking of, let’s learn a spell.” Sora scribbled something down in a notebook and passed it over to Salem. “This is the diagnostics spell. Try it on Ha Na.”
He picked it up, accepted the bottle of captured sunshine Amaru offered him, and used it to power the spell. Which he pronounced very carefully.
“Shor dene zata na gev adi.”
The lines immediately drew themselves in the air above Ha Na. Exactly as he’d seen when Sora enacted this very spell. It was heartening for a full second before he realized he had no idea what he was looking at.
“Uh…I read this like a monitor screen last time, was I right or…?”
Sora stood from the table, coming around to his side, and started pointing. “You were right. The numbers above her heart indicate heart rate. Look at it the way you would a physical monitor.”
Salem focused there and read aloud, “Eighty. All right, so I know heart rate is normal.”
“Yup. Now, focus here below it. This is blood pressure.”
“One twenty-two over seventy. Wow, Ha Na, that’s an amazing BP for a woman of your age. I’d have thought you were forty with numbers like this.”
She preened, pleased with herself. “Honestly, it wasn’t so good when I first came into the clan. But with Sora and now Amaru monitoring my health, it’s improved greatly. At this rate, I think I’ll de-age.”
“Physically, you’ve done just that.” Sora gave her a smile before pointing to the next number, lower down. “You see here there’s a red number.”
“Oh, yes, right over the abdomen.”
“What does it look like to you?”
“Hmm…perhaps a blockage?”
“Very good. There was a mild case of onset colon cancer, which we caught very early, and she’s undergone treatment for it. It’s why the number is red, but the one next to it is white, showing the improvement of the condition and that her small intestines are healing.”
Wow. Treating cancer, even, without worries of it growing worse.
They kept going, with Evora also leaning around to see better so she could follow Sora’s explanation. Salem frantically took notes and tried to absorb everything at the same time. It was incredible what all this diagnostic spell could do. He’d known this before, from Sora’s explanation, but actually seeing it in person was something else entirely. There wasn’t a disease, condition, or ailment that couldn’t be detected by this spell. Even that was life-changing because, often, half the battle was diagnosing the actual problem.
Sora gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Those are the basics. Let the spell go now. We don’t want to wear you out.”
He let it go, although reluctantly, as it was so fascinating. “How long can this spell be held?”