The klaxon’s scream clawed at Ilmar’s ears, a raw, desperate shriek that seemed to tear at the very stone of the Rookery. The guard scrambled back against the doorframe, knuckles white on the brass handle. “The Tide-surge breached the sea-walls! The lower ward is already—it’s not just water, it’s coming in thick! Men are dropping in the hall!”
Ilmar felt a cold dread clamp around his gut. He’d seen Tide-surges before, violent, unpredictable phenomena, but never within the reinforced confines of the Rookery. This was unprecedented. He glanced at Adelina. Her face, usually so composed, held a flicker of something he hadn't seen before – not fear, but a sharp, calculating focus, a preparedness for disaster.
“Evacuate!” the guard repeated, voice cracking, already turning to flee. “Kask ordered… get everyone up!”
“Wait,” Ilmar called, stepping forward. “How many are down there? What’s the head physician doing?”
“Dr. Vool is… he’s barely conscious himself!” the guard gasped, already halfway out the door. “He took a blast of the miasma trying to seal a breach! It’s chaos! The main gatehouse is sending reinforcements, but they’re still trying to clear the upper levels first!” And then he was gone, his ragged footsteps fading into the cacophony of the alarm and distant shouts.
Ilmar turned to Adelina. “He says the clinic level is flooding, and Dr. Vool is down. We have minutes.”
Adelina finally spoke, her voice cutting through the ringing in Ilmar’s ears with an unexpected clarity. “The lower ward has dedicated isolation cells for the more volatile Tide-afflicted. If those cells are compromised by the surge, the contagion will spread exponentially. And if the Tide itself is surging with this level of virulence…” She trailed off, her eyes fixed on the door. “We need to go down.”
“We?” Ilmar scoffed reflexively, then caught himself. His cynical shield was fraying, piece by piece. He was a disgraced healer, not a soldier. But the guard’s report awakened an old, buried instinct.
“You’re a medical professional, Vares. I have… a particular understanding of the Tide’s effects. And Commander Kask will likely send guards to secure me anyway. Better to be useful,” Adelina stated, her gaze unwavering. She moved towards the reinforced door, her movements surprisingly fluid for someone who had been confined for so long. “Unless you prefer to wait here to be overwhelmed?”
He pushed past his hesitation. “Fine. But don’t try anything.”
They navigated the emergency stairwells, the descent growing colder, the sound of rushing water growing louder with every flight. The air grew thick, humid, carrying a metallic tang Ilmar recognized as raw Tide-miasma. Guards, scrambling upwards, gave them wide berth, their faces pale, their eyes haunted. One, a burly man with a distinctive scar across his brow, saw Adelina and began to snarl, but a brief, sharp glance from Ilmar silenced him, turning his anger into a grim acceptance of the unusual situation.
When they reached the ward level, seawater was churning through the grates. Water, dark and murky, sloshed ankle-deep in the main corridor. Fissures spiderwebbed across the ceiling, dripping steadily. The air hung heavy with a sickly sweet scent, a compound odor of salt, fear, and something else – something profoundly wrong. Several orderlies wrestled with a broken sluice gate, water gushing past them into the main ward. Inmates, some writhing in their bunks, others slumped against the walls, groaned. Dr. Vool lay flat beside an overturned equipment cart, a thin froth on his lips.
“By the Mother Tide,” Ilmar breathed, rushing forward. He knelt beside a guard, Sergeant Jüri, who was convulsing violently, his limbs jerking with unnatural force. Jüri’s eyes were rolled back, his skin mottled with dark, branching veins. “This isn’t ordinary miasma exposure.” Ilmar pressed two fingers to Jüri’s carotid artery, catching a rapid, thready rhythm. His diagnostic training, dormant for too long, surged back. He ran a hand over Jüri’s clammy forehead, then pulled back sharply. The skin was abnormally cold.
He moved quickly, triaging the nearest patients, his mind working through symptoms. Another inmate, a woman named Elina, whimpered, her hands clutching at her throat, her vocal cords clearly paralyzed. Her pupils were fixed and dilated, unresponsive to light. This was not the typical, slow-burning Tide-sickness Ilmar was accustomed to. This was aggressive, fast, attacking the nervous system with terrifying efficiency. The symptoms mirrored those of his disgraced patient, Alaric, but magnified, accelerated. This wasn't a poison; it was a plague, and it was evolving.
“The head physician is down, the orderlies are overwhelmed,” Ilmar called out, his voice cutting through the rising panic. “Someone get Dr. Vool to higher ground! We need clear pathways, now!”
Amidst the chaos, Adelina moved with a chilling calm. A guard, Guard Raud, lay slumped against a wall, barely breathing, his chest rising and falling in shallow, desperate gasps. His face was a ghastly grey, and the dark venous patterns were already reaching his temples. He was fading fast. Adelina, without a word, pushed past a startled orderly and moved towards a supply cabinet. The water, the sickness, the screams – none of it seemed to touch her. She grabbed a pestle and mortar, pulling out several small, labelled vials from a locked drawer that Ilmar hadn’t even noticed in the emergency. Her hands, nimble and precise, crushed various dried herbs and a pungent, crystalline powder into a paste. She dipped a strip of linen into the mix, her fingers moving with the practiced ease of an artisan.
“What are you doing?” Ilmar demanded, his voice sharp with suspicion. Was she attempting to administer a poison now, under the guise of aid?
Without looking up, Adelina answered, her voice even. “Stabilizing him. This variant of the Tide-rot attacks the neural pathways, causing rapid systemic failure. The active compounds in the ‘treatments’ Dr. Vool uses are too slow, too broad-spectrum. This requires targeted intervention to re-regulate neural signaling before permanent damage sets in.” She spoke with the authority of someone who understood the illness far better than any other physician he had encountered.
She applied the poultice to Raud’s forehead, pressing it firm. A moment later, a gasp escaped the guard’s lips. His eyelids fluttered. The frantic, shallow breathing deepened, becoming more regular. The horrifying dark patterns on his skin seemed to recede, just slightly, the ghastly grey replaced by a faint, albeit still sickly, pallor. Ilmar watched, utterly transfixed. The man had been seconds from death, and Adelina, using nothing more than a few scattered clinic stocks and precise measurements, had halted the seizure. It wasn't magic; it was ruthless alchemy.
“He’ll need more, and frequent reapplication,” Adelina stated, already turning back to the cabinet. “But he’s out of immediate danger.”
A heavy hand clamped down on Ilmar’s shoulder, making him flinch. He spun around to see Commander Kask, his face grim, his uniform stained with seawater and mud. Kask’s eyes, usually cold and calculating, were wide with a raw, terrifying desperation as he stared at Adelina, then at the recovering guard. He dragged Ilmar roughly into a less flooded corner, away from the immediate chaos, his grip like iron.
“Vares,” Kask rasped, his voice barely a whisper, thick with an emotion Ilmar had never heard from him before. “You saw that? What she did?”
Ilmar nodded, still reeling from what he’d witnessed. “She… she stabilized him, Commander. It was incredible.”
Kask’s eyes darted around, ensuring no one was close enough to overhear. He leaned in, his breath hot against Ilmar’s ear, smelling of salt and fear. “My boy, Eero… he has it. The same sickness. He’s been fading for weeks, the doctors are useless. They say there’s no cure. But she… she just fixed that man.” His hand tightened on Ilmar’s shoulder, fingers digging into his flesh. “You get her to give me the cure, Vares. Whatever she wants. Freedom, wealth, I don’t care. You get it from her, before her execution. Save my son, and I’ll give you anything. Your license, your old position, anything at all. Just get me that cure.”
Ilmar stared at the unyielding commander, seeing not the grim head of the guard, but a terrified father. Kask’s plea, coupled with what Adelina had just demonstrated, completely dismantled Ilmar's calculations. His career, his disgrace, even Adelina’s innocence – it all suddenly felt secondary. This was about survival. This was about a plague that threatened to consume Revalia from within, starting with Kask’s own child. He had to save Adelina, not just for her sake, but to save the city. The stakes had just been irrevocably rewritten. His goal had shifted, violently, utterly. And he had no idea how he was going to accomplish it. The Rookery, the entire city, was sinking, and Adelina Sarapik, the 'Corvid Queen', was the only one who knew how to build the ark.
“But first,” Ilmar said, his voice quiet but firm, pulling free from Kask’s grip, “we need to get this clinic floor under control. And we need her help.”