Chương 127: Chapter 117: The Junkyard

Click. Lira grinned as the fourth and final spell imprinted itself into her mind. She stretched, and her back popped. Now all she needed was a target for testing, since she wasn't going to repeat something as stupid as testing on herself again. She hid all the incriminating spellcrafting materials before leaving her alcove. The library was mostly empty. There was only one elderly gentleman using one of the tables near the entrance to write a letter, with his valet standing dutifully behind him.

The noble youths had started showing up later in the day ever since their swordsmanship training began, which suited Lira just fine. It meant she did not have to feed them in the library. Still, they would probably show up eventually, so she picked out a few books for them and gathered the bag of dust for disposal before heading out for lunch. After she finished eating, she spotted both Tessa and Sera and sent them to mind the library, giving them instructions about which books to give to whom.

Then she made her way to the maid dormitories. Once there, Lira bent over her luggage chest and searched through her clothes until she found a worn, faded dress, something she had kept specifically for situations where wearing anything newer would attract too much attention. Unfortunately, what did not stand out in the slums stood out considerably more in the palace, so she added a fine cloak to the ensemble, hiding the dress beneath it.

She could not exactly have anyone seeing the head librarian dressed like a beggar. Once outside the palace, she headed west. As she went deeper into the poorer districts, she slipped into an alley, shed the cloak, and stuffed it into her satchel.

"Pika. Cavira. Frushum." Her hair also shifted from a braid into an unassuming bun, letting her easily blend into the crowd. A few blocks further in, connected to the tail end of Market Street, still on the western edge of the city but closer to the noble district than most of its inhabitants would have preferred, was her target. The junkyard. Haltar's busiest attraction. Haltar technically had two junkyards, and this was not the one where actual garbage went to rot.

That yard sat further south, past the tanneries, where the smell alone was enough to keep most visitors away. This one was where the nobility's discards ended up, and if you knew where to look, there was a surprising amount here that still worked, or could be made to work with a little effort. Furniture turned up often enough. Tables, chairs, and, more rarely, mattresses with most of their stuffing intact. None of it lasted long. Someone always got to it first.

Clothing was more reliable, torn shirts and dresses that needed nothing more than a patch or two to be wearable again. But the real prize, the thing that kept people coming back day after day, was food. Half-eaten apples. Bread that had gone stale but was still good. Every once in a while, a noble household's staff would throw out a sheep carcass with the head, feet, and marrow still intact, and on those days, the competition turned vicious.

Most of the participants were children and teenagers, quick enough to beat each other to the good piles, with only a handful of adults scattered among them. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! Even now, a few kids gave her the side-eye as she stepped deeper in. Lira ignored them. She wasn't here for them. She was looking for what lurked beneath it all: an entire second economy of scavengers feeding on whatever the people missed.

Rats, squirrels, crows, and pigeons picked at whatever was too small or too rotten for anyone else to bother with, while dogs and cats ruled over all of them as predators. She had gone back and forth on this for most of the walk. A human test subject would tell her the most, but she wasn't willing to risk a person's life on an untested spell. The cantrip she had recklessly tested on herself was one thing.

Cantrips tended not to use much mana, which should have made hers relatively safe to cast, though in her case, the spell had been so efficient that it left her shaky anyway. The spells she was about to test now were tier one. They would be far more dangerous if they backfired, though their targeting aspect should make them safer. An animal was a smaller risk. If something went wrong, it would be a smaller tragedy. Lira found her first candidate within a few minutes.

A dog, its sides were mostly ribs, perhaps a greyhound, was favoring one back leg as it picked through a torn hemp sack near the edge of the yard. Lira crouched down a short distance away. She kept a few ink-soaked sheets of paper ready just in case, the ink ball incantation sitting at the tip of her tongue, but the beast didn't react to her presence. It was either too hungry to fight her off or too tired to be scared.

She pulled a strip of dried meat from her satchel, something she'd taken from the kitchens, and held it out. The dog's nose gave a couple of sniffs, and its ear twitched. It looked at the meat, then at the abandoned hemp sack, then back at the meat, and abandoned the sack for the juicier target. While it ate, Lira got even closer, studying the leg. Swollen at the joint, held at an angle that didn't look natural when the dog put weight on it, though it tried to keep it elevated most of the time.

It looked rather painful. She glanced around, a quick sweep of the yard, checking that no one was paying her any mind. The scavengers had their own piles to search over. She waited a few seconds, until the dog had settled into gnawing on the jerky, distracted enough not to bolt, before she murmured the words.

"Yorad. Cipos. Kalaba. Terran. Hano." The dog's ear flicked once, as if something had brushed past it that only it could feel. Then its whole body went briefly rigid, jerky, forgotten, before it let out a startled yelp and spun in a tight circle, snapping at its own back leg with a sharp bark that turned into a confused whimper. Lira held perfectly still. Her eyes were wide as she watched the leg go perfectly whole, even the swelling gone, as if it had never been hurt in the first place.

The dog stood there for a moment, weight settled evenly across all four legs for what was probably the first time in a while, and then it put weight on the bad leg directly. The look on its face was almost as surprised by this as Lira's. And then it decided the appropriate response was to turn and launch itself at her. Lira flinched back on instinct, but not fast enough, and the dog's tongue caught her across the cheek before she got a hand up between them.

She laughed despite herself, and immediately regretted opening her mouth. Whatever the dog had been eating out of that sack must have been an unholy level of rancid. She clamped her lips shut and turned her face away, still laughing through her nose while the dog slobbered all over her face. She finally got a hand flat against its chest and held it at arm's length.

The dog gave the hand a couple more licks before taking off, running a wide, giddy loop around a pile of broken chairs, then back toward her, as if it was testing the leg from every possible angle before it would fully believe it was healed. Lira wiped at her cheek with the back of her sleeve, then looked at her sleeve before shaking her head with a smile.

"Yorad. Luneth. Velar." The slobber vanished along with the smears of dirt she picked up. Lira watched the dog for a while, making sure it was alright. The swelling was completely gone, and she couldn't see any adverse effects. Whatever the dog had just felt, the process seemed painless. She watched as it ran circles around her, tail wagging; it was definitely happy with the result. She considered, for a second, trying her general healing cantrip on it too. Would it improve its general health?

Would it add more meat to its bones? She shook her head, deciding against it. One healing spell at a time.