The Best Adventure Yet

An adventurer visits her regular healer and finds somebody new in his place.

But the person who walked into the waiting room wasn’t Murtah, who was sour-faced and dry as a dead twig.

The cascade of beads parted around a tall woman with shoulders so wide that they filled the entire doorway. And the face—it was many things: broad, yes; imperious, also yes; achingly beautiful, with winged brows, a strong nose, and a full mouth set in stern lines, yes yes yes—but it was not sour, and it certainly was not dry. It was a face that belonged on a monument to a war hero, or an allegorical painting titled something like Justice Strikes Down Her Enemies, filled with swirling shapes and people clutching their breasts, possibly because they’d been struck down, possibly because they were swooning. That she was dressed in mundane healer’s whites only underscored the absurdity of her presence in Murtah’s stead.