Even though he was possessed by a dream and turned over to the priests as a child, it had not started then. He had known only that the Spiral of Destiny existed, not whom he would follow along it or how he would help them.

Like any priest, he learned the ways of healing, but at the gods’ direction, he went further than most and learned how to heal those outside his own race. They had him learn several languages, including a long-dead one that he’d had to seek out, and pay to be instructed in, a painful and nontechnological process, because Sessile brain physiology did not interact well with most language chips.

They’d driven him before that to search out the scrolls holding the abstracts of systems that let him extrapolate how many—perhaps most—physical bodies functioned. Myriad rules surrounded healing and when it could and couldn’t be done. He learned them all, knowing that someday it would be his destiny to break the most important of them. The gods told him that, and seemed unruffled by the prospect.

Later they had sent him off-planet in order to mature and learn. That was not an uncommon journey for a priest to make. Indeed, it was somewhat expected in order to achieve true enlightenment—though most of them did not go too far away. Joining the Spisoli, traveling on one of their ships, was also not uncommon, although he had chosen to travel with them for an extended time in a way few opted for, despite the fact that the Spisoli ships were comfortable and smelled good, and you could sleep well on them.

That was because to be a Sessile priest was to depend on the universe for sustenance. Luckily, many of the established races honored that tradition or the laws of hospitality at a minimum. The Spisoli, though, were a little uncertain in this regard, because sometimes unpredictable superstitions drove what they did. But if you chose a group that was not one of the ones chasing a particular Arranti, you were usually safe enough.

Other races would provide food and water, shelter, warmth, and whatever other necessities—a sparse list when you were a priest—you required to survive. If necessary, you could work for those things.