Day of Affliction

During the first week of the eleventh month, Meletis observes Pharika’s winter festival, the Cheimazion. The sick and infirm sleep in the god’s temples during this festival in hopes of receiving a miraculous cure, and the truly devout imbibe near-lethal doses of poison, trusting Pharika to oversee their recovery. In some tales, a cobra with rainbow scales appears in Pharika’s temple and bites some incurable soul. The envenomed victim pitches and babbles for three days, but their disjointed words prove to be a font of alchemical truths, sometimes bearing the secrets to healing others around them. In most of these myths, the victim expires at the end of these three days—Pharika’s price for sharing her secrets—but in some, the patient recovers, thereafter exhibiting remarkable resistance to illness and poisons.