He gazed out across the expanse of the town: from his vantage point he could count the spires of the churches which acted as nuclei to the citizens of this area. Closer to the centre was the marketplace, surrounded on three sides by the channelled and irrigated river, which swept around calmly as if there was no concern in the world for the town. As if there was no reason, as to why it was currently cut off from the outside world. The man massaged his eyes in pained thought: why was that plague here? He had heard rumours about it from other towns, how those infected turned to ash, leaving behind blue crystals. He shivered as a cold breeze blew over the parapet, turning in brief whorls of air as it moved onwards.

“My lord?” a voice asked cautiously from behind him.

Lord Marius Storm, master of Rhaeadr, turned away from his watch of the city and towards the group of people congregated behind him.

There were some soldiers nearby stationed at intervals along the defences of the city and the keep; but those that spoke were not them. It was a group of healers along with the city priests.

“Is there any news?” he asked cautiously.

A young male healer stepped forwards: his red robes and sky blue surplice hanging down over his shoulders. “It has spread my lord. Three more cases today.”

“What could be done?”

“Until a white healer arrives, not much; we can separate the infected from the healthy ones. But beyond that all we can do is care for them as best as we can.”

Lord Storm’s face turned dark with worry.

“How long do we have?” he asked in concerned trepidation.

“At the best we should have between two to three months until the entire city of Rhaeadr is wiped out, that is if we act to contain it further. Otherwise things will escalate quickly.”

“How; quickly?”

The sky healer looked down at his feet, not wishing to say.

“How: quickly?” the lord asked again.

“Two weeks until the entire town is wiped out by the plague.”

She stirred slightly from her sleep: that was until a commanding hand grabbed one of her horns.

“Get up: we have a good day’s walk before we reach the next town.” Barked a commanding; female voice.

Nicola woke as the pulling sensation on her horn increased. “Mistress?”

“Come on. We need to get going.” Lucia encouraged her apprentice.

Nicola rose from her position next to a tree. She tried to remember what had happened. She looked onwards down the dirt road towards where Lucia was heading; her eyes shining a stratified blue-red mottled marble.

“You bit me.” She murmured.

Lucia turned towards her. “What was it you just asked?”

“You bit me mistress.”

Lucia smiled evilly. “Of course I did, why do you ask?”

“Why did you bite me?”

“For two reasons: Firstly It was part of the healing process, I had to make sure you were no longer human for you to be fully cured.” She explained calmly. “And secondly I was hungry after healing you.”

“You bit me because you were hungry?” Nicola exclaimed in annoyance.

“Nicola, you will learn of what my words mean soon.” Lucia replied cryptically before heading along the road. She reached the brow of the hill and gazed out along their route. She smiled in realisation for where they were.

“Not far now. We are near the town of Permulcere: there is a chapterhouse there.”

May Solan checked through the list of healers residing in the Chapterhouse. She counted the number of healers for each division, who had arrived that week and who had left. There were no healers of the highest tier in the chapterhouse; she doubted that there would be any close by attending to any outbreaks. She quickly checked the register of healers: a collection of books, each volume pertaining to a different rank within the Organisation. She looked up towards the doorway to the Chapterhouse to see two people enter: a healer and a young woman who sported a pair of obsidian ovisian horns on her head: which flowed back over her skull, before curling outwards to the sides. May looked at the healer’s surplice: attempting to read the symbols which identified the healer, quite difficult when it is caked in mud and completely obscured from view.

“We wish to be recorded for any future requests.” The woman asked with unnerving calmness.

“Name and rank please: you had best get your surplice cleaned at some point, I cannot see your rank.”

“My name Is Lucia Vitririus: I am a healer of the White rank.”

May grabbed the book containing the list of white healers, scrolling down the names until she reached Lucia’s name. “I will take your word for it. Please sign this book please.”

Lucia reached graciously for the book that was offered to her, writing her name in the long list of current occupants as well as the required date for her entry to the chapterhouse.

“Also I would like to register this young lady as my apprentice.”

May nodded, removing the apprentice book from its shelf before laying it out on the table. Lucia signed her name as master before motioning for Nicola to do the same.

Nicola moved forwards before making her mark in the book.

“Welcome to the order of healers.” greeted May.

“Thank you.” Replied Nicola, graciously.

Lucia was already at the door to the inner area of the complex.

“Come on then.” She encouraged.

Nicola followed her mistress through the colonnade surrounding a large quadrangle where a group of green robed apprentices knelt; practicing healing techniques on each other: mainly bandaging theoretical cuts and wounds to stop bleeding, or immobilising an arm or leg so that the bones would heal. The style of the chapterhouse building was monastic to say the least. The two women walked steadily onwards down a wing with a series of doors facing south along a long white plastered corridor. Lucia glanced at each door in turn until they reached a group of doors more ornate than the rest. In each of the doors was a slide in name plaque with the healer’s rank and apprentice’s name.

“Well this is going to be our home for the next few weeks.” Lucia informed the young woman beside her as they entered the Spartan cell.

Lord Storm again found himself looking out over the town.

“My lord, we seem to have a problem.”

He turned towards the young healer woman who had appeared behind him.

“Go on.”

“We have begun moving those infected by the plague into quarantine on boats; however we found that one of them had: Gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean by that?”

“They had vanished: no sign of any of the gems that appear after the death of a plague victim. Instead there was just blood.”

“So what does that mean?”

She sighed in resignation: “We do not know. Only the white healers know: and they are very secretive about their knowledge.”

It was approaching night; and Nicola had had enough. For the last phase of daylight was just dying away: and she had been stuck with her mistress’s washing.

“You agreed to be my apprentice: some tasks that I give you, you will not enjoy. But all of them are necessary in your duties as a healer.” Was what Lucia had said; before she headed elsewhere within the chapterhouse.

Nicola paused briefly in her task to think to herself.

Who was she? Up until this morning she had been a young man by the name of Nicholas: he had lived happily and well with his mother and siblings in a small village on the Vale of Medrus: a wet place in the flood plain of the Medrus River. He had been expected to take over his parent’s mercantile business, one that this mother was trying to keep going after his father’s death. There was even a young lady in the village that he had his eye on, considering his options as to whether to ask for her hand in marriage.

Then the plague had arrived in the village- and Nicholas was the third victim of the infection. He would have died were it not for Lucia, the pretty pale skinned, dark eyed Lucia. A woman who by all appearances was not older than twenty one: and exquisitely beautiful. A strange kind of beauty that Nicholas was unable to place at the time: and which Nicola had trouble placing now. The healing had been a success in some way: but why her gender had switched during the healing was strange.

But: who was she now? He, or more precisely she, did not quite know who she was. Was he Nicholas, the Merchant’s son: or Nicola, the apprentice to the white healer Lucia.

A thought came to her: she had made a choice, not only when asked by Lucia.

“Having trouble?” a girl chirped from somewhere nearby.

Nicola glanced around frantically, trying to pinpoint the source of the speaker.

“Down here.”

She looked down into her own reflection in the bucket of water: where Lucia’s surplice lay.

Her reflection smiled: her red-blue eyes gradually shifted to a cool blue grey, whilst her horns appeared to vanish from her head.

“Hello.” Chirped the reflection.

“Who are you?” Nicola asked confused.

“Does that really matter?” the reflection asked.

Nicola thought briefly, not sure about if it mattered or not if she knew the name of her reflection.

“No I guess it doesn’t.”

“Good. Now then you were having trouble defining yourself after the changes which occurred whilst you were being healed. Am I correct?”

“I think so.”

“You wonder if you are Nicholas or Nicola. You are unsure if you are either one of the two.”

Nicola felt she could understand what her reflection was saying, but was surprised by its conclusion.

“You are not Nicholas neither are you Nicola: at least not yet. Your mind is that of Nicholas, yet your body is that of Nicola. That much: you could probably tell by yourself.”

“So what do I do?” she asked.

“You can do the next task I have lined up for you.” A voice replied behind her.

Nicola turned to see Lucia standing in the doorway.

“I am sorry Mistress.”

Lucia smiled at her apprentice. “You are not the first White healer apprentice to talk to themselves, or rather their reflections: you will not be the last.”

Nicola looked at her with visible curiosity. “Did it happen to you when you were an apprentice?”

Lucia looked away slightly. “No. it did not.”

She moved further into the room, lying down on the large bed in the middle of the room. A silence hung between them.

“Is there anything else you wish to ask me Nicola?” Questioned Lucia; with some exhaustion.

“Just one thing: why am I female?”

Lucia smiled at the question. “Do you really wish to know my apprentice?”

“Yes.”

“All white healers are female. With one or two exceptions that is. Even if your body was male to begin with, during the healing process your body will always become that of a young woman. Does that answer the question?”

“Why?”

Lucia sighed in resignation, “Goddess knows. I don’t.”

Again silence between master and apprentice, before Nicola asked “You wanted me to do something, Mistress?”

Lucia sat up and gave Nicola a confused look; before she remembered what it was she was going to ask her apprentice. “Yes I need you to head to the store room and fetch your apprentice robes, as well as the equipment bag there.”

Nicola nodded in acceptance of her task: but not before removing the washing from the water and lying it out over the two chairs in the room.

Lucia watched her apprentice go.

“My first apprentice: quite a pretty one I would say.” She mused to herself. “And how lovely her blood tastes: tonight will be interesting, I wonder if she will feed or not and if so from whom?”

Lucia leant back onto her bed and rested her eyes.

“Just a few minutes nap I think.”

Again the meadow wreathed in fog by the ice lake. Nicola watched her surroundings for any sign of either the girl or the horned man.

Nothing: Just silence in the endless swirling pea-soup mist. She wandered down to the water’s edge and glanced in. For some reason despite the ice before her she felt warm. Warm and empty and: hungry. She was restless to move on to somewhere, yet she could not tell where. She let out a heavy breath, her throat was parched dry but she did not know why. Nicola turned to the lake: knowing that was the way she left the dream last time, the time she changed. She readied herself before leaping onto the ice. Her rough pig leather boots slid across the polished surface before she launched herself forwards towards the opposite bank.

She suddenly felt her eyes open and she was back in the small cell with Lucia. Nicola glanced up from her rough bed towards where her mistress slept between comfy sheets.

Nicola felt her throat; the dry parched feeling was growing by the second: she needed to drink. Quietly she slid of the ledge where she was sleeping and padded over to where her boots lay. Quickly she pulled them onto her feet, before picking up a pewter mug and walking out into the corridor and onwards to cool night air. Before her was a fountain situated in the centre of the large quadrangle lawn. She walked steadily towards it, hoping for there to be relief for the burning feeling in her throat. She plunged the metal mug deep into the flowing waters of the pool, withdrawing it and consuming the water rapidly. She felt the coolness of the liquid flow over her tongue and down her throat into her stomach. The burning seemed to stop briefly, before returning more vigorously. Again Nicola tried to supress the feeling with water, yet that in itself was not enough. She looked upwards into the night sky: the burning sensation seemed to increase moment by moment. She caught a scent on the night breeze, a strange smell which seemed so alluring and tasty: like the smell of roasted beef or lamb over a fire, the pull of a good meal.

Nicola dropped the mug and staggered onwards towards the source of the scent and out of the gates of the Chapterhouse.