Sister Maelis

Maelis was eleven when she learned to tell the dead from the Undead. Not by the face. By the wound.

She grew up in the lands of Ysmer, where the Undead came down from the hills every winter. People there did not die of old age. They died at night.

Ordinary wounds bleed, close and are forgotten. An Undead wound does not. It turns grey at the edges. It smells of wet earth. And it never stops spreading.

The village healers treated them like any other. And the wounded died anyway, three days later, with cold skin and open eyes.

Maelis started paying attention. Which wound it was, who had made it, how long it took to turn. At thirteen she knew more than the healers. At fifteen, nobody who reached her in time died on her.

Then Morlathe came.

He did not bring a handful of hungry corpses. He brought an army. In a single night, Ysmer ceased to exist. Her mother. Her father. Her two brothers. The whole village.

Maelis survived hiding in the well, water up to her chest, listening. When she climbed out at dawn, there was no one left to heal.

That day she learned to hate them. And she swore she would never hide again.

She walked all the way to the Order of the Dawn and knocked on the door. The sisters took her in to make a healer of her. She asked them to teach her to fight as well.

They told her a healer does not fight. Maelis answered that a dead healer does not heal either.

She learned both. Mornings were bandages, salves and prayers to Elyra. Afternoons were the mace.

She has carried it ever since. Black iron, a broad head and a crown of spikes. It is not a pretty weapon. It is an honest one. When it falls on one of the Undead, it breaks whatever the dark magic was holding up. And whatever is left standing does not rise the same way again.

Then she turned to Necrosis. The curse the Undead leave in the blood of the living. It drains your life little by little, and almost nothing can stop it.

Maelis stops it. With fire and with Light, she cauterizes the wound before it takes any more. What it already took does not come back. But the rest stays where it is.

There are very few healers in the world who can do that. She is one of them.

In battle she stands in front of her own. She tears the curses off them, covers them with a shield of Light and sends them back into the fight. At her side, the sisters of the Dawn hit the Undead harder. As if her hatred were contagious.

The Undead have learned not to touch her. Whoever wounds her gets the mace back. And she comes out of every blow harder than before.

She is fifty-two years old and stands one metre sixty-two. The novices say she is the gentlest sister in the convent. Until the bell rings.

Every morning she prays for the living. And for the dead of Ysmer.

She does not pray for Morlathe.

She is hunting him.