>>6099486>>6099463>>6099149>>6099146Hand-in-hand, you and your master’s daughter enter her office. With a gesture and a murmured incantation, Izirina shut the door behind her in much the same way the Archmage would have. You, meanwhile, greet the woman herself.
“Master,” you acknowledge, with a small bow of your head.
“Mious. Or Van Houtzmann. Whichever it is, today.” The Archmage’s voice, never as young as her lineless face, has a wispy rasp to it that startles you. “You rather look the part of a ‘Van Houtzmann’ more than a ‘Mious’ today. What have you done to yourself, Apprentice?”
You could have asked her much the same thing, and you almost say so. Her face, yes, is still unblemished and youthful. But the rest of her? Even in her characteristic oversized robes, hiding so much of her, you can tell there is something wrong. Her hair is as wispy as her voice. She sits at her desk, straight-backed and stiff, and has every appearance of strength… But then again, you don’t actually recall her office ever HAVING a seat for her before, or her using it if it had one. She was always more inclined to stand, and to hover about by some unknown mechanism, be it a secret spell or magical device. A quick scan with your sorcerous sixth sense is sufficient to secure your suspicion: her aura is weak and ‘uneven’, and a great deal of it is focused upon several Life Magic spells focused upon alleviating ailments, mending injury, and reducing pain.
“I heard you were unwell,” you say.
“Did you now?” the Archmage asks, with a subtle-but-piercing glare at her daughter.
Izzy flinches, and grips your hand tighter. The Archmage’s eyes settle upon this gesture, and register… Not displeasure, or disgust, but something rather like confusion or exasperation. Izirina extracts her fingers from yours, self-conscious to judge by the small flush of her face, though her mother makes no comment one way or the other.
“It is true, of course,” Archmage Theresa Henzler acknowledges, cold and clinical as ever. “My alchemy, my practiced methods of decades, have finally failed. Even all my magic, all my knowledge, cannot cure cancer.”
“Cancer?” you whisper.
You look towards Izirina, who casts her gaze down. She isn’t surprised, and so she must have known. Why didn’t she say? You don’t ask now—she’s shaking like a leaf, and you have more immediate concerns.
“What kind?”
The Archmage laughs, or you think it is a laugh—it might well be a cough.
“Many kinds, boy… Many. It would be easier to list the major organs which aren’t at risk. The sickness is in the blood, in the bone, and from there, there was no way to isolate it and excise it as I have in the past.”
“You’ve had cancer before?”
(Has she had it this whole time?)
“For over one hundred years, yes,” she acknowledges blithely. “Now and again. A small thing, to a Chimericist of my calibre.”
