The Price of Knowledge

Sirius was grinding the herbs with a mortar and pestle, sweat dripping from his forehead due to the strain. Spring was coming to an end, and the temperature outside became hot and mildly uncomfortable. Inspired by the World Tree leaves, he asked permission to study medicine. For that he needed a blank notebook and a book covering the basics. Due to his acceptable behaviour in the last half a year and with a bit of help from Father Gregor, he managed to get the Inquisitor's approval and his request was approved. As an apprentice of a healer he learnt some of the basics from master Verden, but it would be better to revise his knowledge from the start and consult some additional reference materials.

Unsurprisingly, the World Tree was not something anyone has ever seen. Therefore, Sirius could only gain experience walking the threaded path, getting experience bit by bit. Every day he would go into the forest and gather whatever caught his eye or prepare the ointments and herbal mixes for villagers' needs. Today he was preparing the tea for Melissa, who had a severe case of hay fever. Usually, he would give some of the prepared mixes he dried out in the sun, but they were of no help. After walking around the village and asking for dried sea-buckthorn and dill, he was ready to make a new attempt. He took the newly-minced paste along with dried stinging nettles from his stores and went to the bakery, where Melissa lived. Her father, John Eyethorn, accepted the medicine and gave Sirius a fresh bread in exchange.

Money was only something big cities used. For a small village like Rivervale the exchange of goods or favours was a way to go. Now that Sirius was done with his duties as a healer, he could return to what he was enjoying the most - research. Whenever he had to do something without thinking, he would run the environment mana through himself, in an attempts to master whatever little control he had. One day he noticed some changes in the mana around him when he minced the blackleaf root. It led him down the rabbit hole of experiments on any herb he could find, classifying them in his notebook. What he found out made no sense to him: dill or chamomile would give no effect when mana passed through them, blackleaf's flowers would make mana just a tad colder, while roots made it barely noticeably hotter, mint leaves made mana shoot with a bit more speed, but drying it on the sun stopped mana from passing entirely. He found a lot of examples of this but neither of them had any connection from medicinal point of view. Worst of all, he could not ask about it from other people, lest it would be another Codex misconduct.

Observer would often enter his home-made lab or peer through the window to make sure Sirius was not "delving into the realm of divine". He hated this phrase, to him it made no sense: people used the magic with no thought, following the steps given out freely by church, but this same church forbade walking out of the line in regards of magic. What Sirius found the most fascinating is that the same spell could be made using three different methods - with manipulating the energy around with your mind, making a magic circle, and now, theoretically, with the mix of herbs. And there might be other ways he was not aware of. He pondered about this conundrum for almost a week, thinking about how to ask the Inquisitor about this without offending the church. When he composed a plan and was ready to go to sleep... A knock to the hatch.

"Good morning, Sirius!" Father Gregor knocked on the steps from the first floor.

"Hello?" Sirius was stumped, but nonetheless went downstairs. "Why morning? Oh..."

The green light shone through the windows, a new symbol of sunrise for the people of Rivervale.

"You did not sleep? In your own birthday?"

"My birthday?" His groggy mind was catching up to speed. He grabbed his head. "I did not sleep!?"

"Well, congratulations, I guess!" Laughed Father Gregor. "Let's get ready, I have a present for you."

"Thank you... A present? For me? Thank you very much Father Gregor!" Sirius hugged him in excitement. "What is it?"

"First get ready, then everything else."

"Sure!"