>>5777013Classes in this subject continued to come easily to you. You were, for WHATEVER reason, a natural at 'Medical Magic & Living Alchemy’, the much-coveted magic of great healers, useful when the Gods’ chosen priests and paladins were otherwise occupied. All that year, and the next, you excelled while in this ONE specific area, your rival fell behind. While you were being offered you pick between advanced electives like ‘Magical Bloodlines & Heredity’ and ‘Transmutation, & Chimerical Studies’, HENZLER was held back after class, assigned special tutors (must be nice!), and she STILL looked set to be held back a year in this particular field.
Well, she was three years younger than anyone ELSE in the class anyway, let alone YOU, so it served her right!
But then came the day when you forgot your notes in class, busy chatting with your classmates. When you returned, you found Henzler in the room … or, rather, you found HenzlerS, plural.
“I cannot believe this,” sighed Henzler the Elder—ARCHMAGE Henzler!
You’d never actually seen the woman in person, but EVERYONE knew the Archmage by reputation. There was no mistaking her. She had icy-blonde hair beneath her tall, pointed hat with its gleaming star-emblem of office. Her piercing blue eyes shone out of a curiously stiff but undeniably beautiful, pale face, so unlike her (well, adopted, so duh) daughter’s. According to rumours, the Archmage was at LEAST a hundred years old, but so skilled in Chimericism—in LIFE MAGIC and LIVING ALCHEMY, you best subjects!—that she still had the face and body of a twenty-year-old. Her voice certainly had a bit of the rumbling fry of the aged to it, though… And in truth, it seemed the overlarge, frumpy outfits ran in the family, since you couldn’t speak to the Elder Henzler’s BODY at all beneath her robes of office.
“I’m sorry mu—”
A chill silence fell between the two.
“I’m sorry, Madame Archmage,” whispered Henzler the Younger—Izirina Henzler, the one you were used to calling ‘Henzler’.
“It’s just pathetic,” the Archmage remarked, without obvious invective but nevertheless with all the feeling of a judge’s sentence. “You are SUPPOSED to be my daughter, you know.”
“I’m trying, but I just… It’s difficult for me.”
“Which is why you have the tutors,” Archmage Henzler snapped at Baby Henzler, voice not raising but pace increasing like a salvo of upcast <Magic Missiles>, “and the remedial lessons, and the access to rare books NOBODY else has access to, and the exercises, and—”
“Maybe it’s because of… Of what’s wrong with me?” asked Little (well, slightly shorter than you) Henzler.
