Some madmen suffer from an affliction that is beyond cure. In such instances, death becomes the only remedy, the ultimate destination and release.
Should Solani not yet have performed a blood rite using her family's flesh and blood, Fran would not hesitate to explore an alternative treatment approach.
Though she has not undergone the spiritual corruption of pagan rituals and is a wholly self-proclaimed devotee of a malevolent deity—an embodiment of willful depravity—she is not entirely beyond redemption.
Fran possesses the ability to alter Solani's subconscious, even to manipulate and fabricate her sense of "self," erasing the fervor and madness that plague her mind. She could assist Solani in living the remainder of her life as a dignified and content noblewoman.
If the madness within her psyche has taken such deep root that it cannot be extricated, then Fran would seek to reshape her very persona.
When antivirus software fails, one must resort to a format! And if formatting proves ineffective, then physical destruction and hardware replacement are the next steps... Fran's medical strategies are plentiful; there is always one that will suit her needs.
However, at this moment, the ancient sacrificial rite of blood and flesh has already been fulfilled, and the ironclad sins have been committed. There is no room left for reprieve.
Not even Fran's surgical virtuosity could salvage those claimed by flesh-shaping liturgies.
To reclaim such souls would pit her against the Chalice itself—for what physician wrests offerings from a god's marrow?
Thus Solaine's chart bore but one prognosis. Fran practiced medicine, not absolution; her scalpel carved no pardons for consecrated butchers.
Though versed in jurisprudence's labyrinth (her legal dissertations adorned academy shelves), her creed distilled to arterial simplicity—lex talionis etched in hemoglobin.
"Another tiresome case..." Black sutures gleamed as her knuckles flexed. "When will these zealots learn? Unrepentant apostates reek of blasphemer's stench."
Some maladies yield to calibrated redress. Others...
Are walking pestilence.
——
Third dawn's breath
Veilwardens' armory, Central Norrington
"Sister Heirda, when do you suppose Dr. Fran will finally contact us? Three days already..." Vivienne sprawled across the armory chaise, her form encased in regulation gear—a fortress of steel rivets and leather strapping.
The latest chivalric romance lay splayed across her face like a parchment shroud.
"Three grains in Time's hourglass," came the reply. Heirda's whetstone hissed against the ritual knife's rune-carved hilt, her gaze mirroring still waters beneath winter skies.
Patience was the first sacrament in their funerary sisterhood.
Once, she'd trailed a senior huntress through five cities and hinterlands untamed—three lunar cycles spent pursuing a schismatic deacon. When steel finally parted heretical vertebrae at journey's end, ecstasy had coursed clearer than mountain springs through her veins.
The nun resumed her blade's purification. Let seasons turn and shadows lengthen. Silent vigils held meaning when consecrated by purpose's flame.
Vivienne's proximity to Dr. Fran had conscripted her into Heirda's strike unit—a development that tethered the knight to the armory's cold embrace between readiness drills. Her armor stood sentinel even in repose, articulated greaves gleaming against chaise upholstery.
"Consider this interlude... vacation's cousin." The paperback's garish title Steamhaven Valkyrie vs. Hulking Goblinoid creased as she plucked a soda cracker from the wicker basket. Inked heroics unfolded between crunching pauses.
How curious—after endless grievances about the Conclave's relentless assignments, this unplanned reprieve now chafed like ill-fitted mail. Her fingers drummed arrhythmic patterns on vellum pages.
Heirda's blade paused mid-polish. The nun's narrowed eyes traced the novel's embossed lettering. "What alchemy transmutes pulp into modern obsession?" Her murmur carried the crispness of archival parchment.
The sister's current tome bore weightier provenance: Crimson Visages from the Veilwardens' restricted stacks, its leather binding whispering of censored liturgies and cardinal heresies. Her thumb lingered on the embossed chalice motif as Vivienne's paperback protagonist roared another steam-powered battle cry.
This book is one of the instructional texts on the Red Cup's shell doctrine, but it lacks any influence from mysticism. Therefore, it serves as general knowledge about the Red Cup sect within the Hunters. However, due to the sensitive nature of this document, a certain level of clearance is required for access.
"Sister Haida, who exactly is Dr. Fran? The General Affairs Bureau actually agreed to implement her plan for the cleansing operation against the Red Cup sect's lair and issued a cleansing directive."
Under normal circumstances, the General Affairs Bureau would not allow someone with an unknown identity and potential security risks, like Fran, to participate in cleansing missions to eliminate unstable factors in operations.
"Unfortunately, I have no idea," Haida replied, expressing her genuine lack of knowledge on the matter.
"However, based on our previous experiences working together, I personally agree with the Bureau's characterization of her as 'friendly.' Dr. Fran is indeed remarkably reliable in most situations. She can even unintentionally dominate those around her."
"I see..."
Vivian subtly shifted her gaze back to the novel in her hands.
She had thought that Haida, as the daughter of "Chief Hunter" Ahen Moira, might know more secrets...
As a member of the Confidential Court, collecting information at any time and place had almost become Vivian's instinct. This sometimes made her seem somewhat unprofessional.
"Am I really going to have to stay on standby in the maintenance room all day again? Putting on and taking off this equipment is such a hassle..."
Vivian rubbed her eyes, her tone laced with a hint of helplessness.
At that moment, the door to the maintenance room slowly opened.
A wisp of cool, damp gray mist wafted in.
"They're here."
Haida's gaze sharpened. She had already witnessed Dr. Fran's methods of action once in the medical ward, and she recognized them instantly.
"They're here? But this is the maintenance room within the order..."
Vivian showed surprise again, thinking that Fran would first go through a check and reporting process at the door, but instead, she walked straight in?
Could her teleportation ability even exempt her from the "anchor" of the Innocent Land?
The slender figure of Fran in a white coat gradually emerged from the hazy mist.
"Good day to you both."
Fran arched into a porcelain-stretching yawn, her greeting dissolving into gloved fingers pressed against amused lips. Between cases, the physician embraced somnolent inertia with surgical precision—oft letting morning bleed into afternoon before flipping her clinic's Engaged sigil.
Mistveil Clinic's address (Thirteenth Lane, Norrington North—cartographic phantom) deterred casual callers. Yet sometimes Fate's provocation guided desperate pilgrims through the ever-shifting brume...
"Matinal salutations." Heirda inclined her head in monastic economy, bladesinger's discipline overriding protocol. "The quarry has returned to its sty?"
Fran's palms met in approving percussion. How refreshing, this huntress who bypassed pleasantries like scalpels parting fat.
"After two days wearing polymorphic guises—wasteland mendicant, society matron, a baker's dozen more—Madame Solaine sought sanctuary." Steel-framed spectacles caught lamplight as the doctor leaned forward. "Where vermin always congregate..."
Her pause hung scalpel-sharp.
"A congregation of kindred aberrations."
"Time is of the essence; I will notify the Administrative Office right away. The two 'Exemptors' from the White Cup Church have been waiting within the organization for two days now."
"Oh? It seems the scholars of the White Cup are quite invested in this matter."
Fran naturally walked into the armory, casually taking a piece of soda cracker from the wicker basket on the table.
Vivienne carefully shielded the cover of her book, The Knight of the Steam City vs. the Mighty Goblin, slowly hiding it behind her back.
While she didn't mind revealing her reading material in front of her colleague Heirda, she felt an inexplicable sense of shame at the thought of Dr. Fran seeing it.
After completing this motion, Vivienne picked up on Fran's earlier topic.
"The people from the White Cup Church were all fired up after witnessing the byproducts of the flesh-shaping ritual, promptly sending Exemptors to assist with the investigation. They even stayed at our headquarters for two days, ready to participate in the purge at a moment's notice."
She recalled the image of the well-dressed, eloquent, kindly old man from the White Cup Church abruptly slamming his pistol down on the table.
"They've voiced considerable dissatisfaction with the Bureau's quota of only two Exemptors—incessantly inquiring about reinforcements." Heirda slid her polished clasp knife into its scapular sheath, blade whispering against sanctified leather. "Were the Scholomance capable of triangulating heretical dens themselves, they'd already be battering down cultist doors."
The physician's residual fog had dissolved, revealing mundane corridors beyond the armory threshold. The nun paused at the exit, delivering her parting observation with monastic dryness:
"Three catalysts rouse the White Chalice's academics: revolutionary innovations, breakthroughs in pure mathematics..." Her gauntleted hand gripped the doorframe. "...and whispers of Crimson liturgy."
Fran settled onto the chaise with felid grace, spine arching like a prowling lynx stretching after snowfall. "Trauma's shadow lengthens through generations," she remarked around a soda cracker's crisp snap. "Their wariness wears ancestral fingerprints."
Another biscuit disappeared between surgeon's fingers—methodical consumption mirroring her diagnostic precision. The wicker basket's contents dwindled with geometric inevitability.
"These are the White Chalice's Exemptors—Professor Terrence and Mr. Childs."
"Professor Emeritus of Reliquary Studies," Heirda continued, her gauntlet indicating the elder scholar, "Bearer of three sanctified artifacts and master of the Scholomance's arcane formulae. His protégé serves as both adjutant and bulwark."
The professor's frosted temples glinted beneath the armory lights, his tweed greatcoat hanging with the weight of hidden reliquaries. Silver-chained pince-nez bridged a nose weathered by decades of archival dust, while the leather-bound tome under his arm emitted faint hymnal vibrations.
His counterpart stood in stark contrast—twenty summers old with a smithy's shoulders and dawn's smile. Yet the bespoke ballistic rig across his back commanded attention, its oiled leather sheathing a rifle whose barrel length violated three separate municipal ordinances.
"And this," the nun pivoted with funereal grace, "is Dr. Verena Fran—consulting thanatologist and our Cabal's surgical scalpel." Her introduction carried phrased with diplomatic precision, omitting certain... unconventional aspects of the physician's credentials.
Fran's gloved fingers rose in benediction, the gesture catching lamplight through surgeon's latex. Her silent appraisal catalogued the professor's tremor of chronic caffeine poisoning, the younger man's telltale gunpowder residue beneath fingernails—a living dossier unfolding before diagnostic eyes.
"An honor, Dr. Fran." Professor Terrence's clinical scrutiny lingered half a heartbeat too long—the practiced pause of academia assessing surgical prodigies.
(Her youth hung unspoken between them, sharper than any scalpel. What flesh-cult could necessitate such a physician's involvement? Yet protocol's armor held - better to trust the Cabal's judgment than voice a relic-keeper's doubts.)
"The pleasure orbits mutual, Professor." Fran's smile curved with benediction of courtesy, fingertips brushing her sternum in modified Hippocratic salute. "And to you, Mr. Childs—may dawn's vigor sustain us."
The younger man's Adam's apple bobbed like storm-tossed buoy. "L-likewise, Doctor! It's, uh..." Solar enthusiasm warred with protocol's gravity, hands twitching abortively toward handshake territory before snapping behind his back.
His gaze snagged on the obsidian threadwork tracing her wrists. "Those sutures, Doctor...?" The question escaped like stray bullet, all fledgling's eagerness and none of his mentor's restraint. "Field injuries?"
Fran's collar shifted, revealing more stitches climbing her jugular—each knot precise as surgical journal entries. "A chapter from my surgical memoir." Her gloved thumb brushed the nearest suture. "The ink lingers as anatomical memento."
The cracker's crisp snap punctuated her dismissal. Childs blinked, suddenly aware he'd crossed into private pathology.
Fran's eyebrow ascended in scalpel's arc—clinical surprise at the protege's audacity. "Merely occupational mementos," she demurred, gloved fingertips grazing her collar's obsidian embroidery. "Certain... surgical encounters leave lasting impressions."
Professor Terrence's sigh carried the weight of twenty years mentoring exuberant neophytes. (Ten pre-dawn briefings wasted—hadn't he lectured on esoteric decorum? One didn't inquire about a thaumaturge's scars unless invited to share their own.)
"The Bureau's parsimony confounds me." His pen tapped a staccato against reliquary logs. "Five blades against an unfathomed heresy? This arithmetic reeks of either hubris or suicidal valor."
"Four Requiem Cadres shadow our advance," Heirda countered, unrolling a tactical vellum dense with crimson sigils. "The Swordbearers mobilize when thresholds are breached." Her gauntlet traced containment quadrants. "Your role remains diagnostic—unmask the infection's source before excision."
The professor's spectacles flashed with captured lamplight. "Ah. Preferring clean hands while we dirty ours with reconnaissance?" His chuckle carried frostbite's edge. "Very well. The Scholomance shall tolerate this... division of labor."
As the nun detailed extraction protocols, Fran's gaze drifted to Childs' fidgeting fingers—already calculating which surgical steel might best match his firearm's caliber when the inevitable occurred.
"Temporal grace expires." Fran's scalpel-sharp inflection sliced through armory's lingering doubts. Her gloved palm hovered where cardiac auscultation had mapped Solenne's pharmaceutical trail—now pulsing with heretical coordinates.
(The bitter aftertaste lingered: surveillance toxins revealed Crimson Chalice's retreat. Six hours until their surgical theater became vacant womb—six hours to perform this impromptu excision.)
Her boot heels echoed first against stone, surgeon's silhouette dissolving into corridor's hungry shadows. Behind her, reliquary locks clicked shut in merciless cadence—the sound of countdowns and consecrated steel being unsheathed.