The Priestess of Rodona

\"You did the right thing, Levin. I have known that lad quite a while and he is ambitious and greedy so if you would have agreed you and your family would have become another pawn for him to use.\" The old man said while he brought a simple looking bottle and poured little but to Levin and to himself.

\"It's my homemade alcohol, you need it now to go through all of those things in your mind.\" The old man continued and smiled at Levin.

\"Why are you being so kind suddenly to us?\" Levin asked and carefully tasted the alcohol and identified or to be a homemade mead.

\"You remind me of myself when I was young and it's my duty as a healer also to help those who are in need of help.

Not everything that rascal told is the truth about me as I do help people from poor villagers to the kings by judging their hearts and intentions.

About you, I can see that for you, your family is really important and you would sacrifice yourself for them.

So I don't want you to repeat the same mistake as I did in my early years.\" The old man said and took a sip of his mead before continuing.

\"So you still have time to do and fix things while I can only lament in the past and try to do the right thing by healing as many as I can no matter of their status.\" The old man said and it seemed like he had fallen inside of him looking at some distant memory.

Levin only sipped his mead when suddenly the old man woke up again and said.

\"I will tell you my story that you can learn from it.\" He coughed a little bit before starting.

\"I was a promising student in the arts of healing and people hailed me as a prodigy in that art and it got into my head and made me arrogant I refused to heal anyone else than someone who could fit in my status and I ended offending a lot of people.

I had even left my family behind to the village my wife and children also and rarely visited there.

But one of those people I offended was a king of the country my family lived and there was a plague amongst the common people it had started from my village and slowly it was spreading so the king who had tried everything in his last resort killed everyone in the village and burned it down to stop the plague from spreading.

So every peasant that was found with the plague or similar symptoms were killed and burned.

The rich people got away more easily as they had money to pay churches to use their healing resources to them.

So when I finally went back to my family I only saw ruins of the once prosperous village with no one alive there.

That was because my arrogance had raised to my head my family ended up dead and I couldn't fix it anymore.

So that day I made a vow I will heal anyone I can who has good heart and intentions no matter what their status is in the country.\" The old man said and looked somewhat sorrowful while he poured more lead to his mug.

\"Thank you for sharing the story it has made me see a new viewpoint for life and maybe I can be better father and husband now.

With my leg and arm, I might not be fit to swing weapon so we'll anymore but I have a lot of other options I can do from a farmer to a teacher.

I was so stuck up and depressed that I couldn't get back to the peak strength I had when I was alright that I didn't think about my family but now I do see that I do have more options than I could have thought about before.\" Levin said while looking at the old man.

\"No thank you for listening to this old man ramble about a life oh I also got something for you to help you with your decision.

Here are the maps of different continents that don't have the church's powers on and the different powerhouses, guilds, towns, etc there.

I think you already got what I mean that I don't have to list everything that the maps and books have in them.\" The old man said and gave five different kinds of maps to Levin among five different books that had all the basic information about the continent's related to the maps.

\"Thank you once again you have been a great help,\" Levin said while he watched the old man to leave.

When he saw that the old man had left he opened the maps and looked at these continents that he also has called barbaric places and actually saw how advanced they seemed.

He also started to open the books and read through them to see is there anything fitting for them and could he find a place that they could call home for now.