Book One – Chapter 9

Well now, consider the infusion of a healer’s energy as a conduit for directing and accelerating a patient’s recovery. Imagine, in the most simplistic way that is not yet concerned with the intricate and complex design of the wizard body, that you wanted to mend a broken bone. Make it an easy one. Imagine not an injury where half of the bone is shattered to hundreds of microscopic fragments with such a force that these fragments spread from your patient’s shoulder blade all the way to his lungs, while the other half is strewn across the deepest parts of a forest battleground just waiting for the whims of the next worst fate-distorting witch; do yourself a favour and envision instead a straightforward fracture, a singular, clear-cut break between two pieces of bone. Allow yourself the comfort of not imagining a patient on the precipice of death, who screams and twists and fights back in pain before you can even get close to touching him. Instead, envision a serene and motionless patient who will not bleed dry with every second that you delay doing your thing.

For healing a broken bone, it is not enough to shift the pieces back into place. You need to make them stick. Now, an earth shifter can take two rocks and hold one balancing atop the other as long as he pours energy into maintaining their position. If he stops, gravity will have its way. A skilled earth shifter can reshape and fuse the rocks to maintain stability even after he lets go of them. He can take two rocks and turn them into one. And if you look at the other elements, you can say that even the average potato-farmer human could take two cups of water, pour both into one kettle, and thus make one water. Oh, how much we have in common after all.

You, however, are not a bone wizard, or a muscle wizard, or a sinew wizard. You do not work with the material, but you make the material work. Your craft lies in orchestrating the body’s inherent restorative processes. For that, you need to channel your own energy into your patient. You use your energy to activate, guide, and expedite his body’s natural healing mechanisms.