>>5790936Well, people DID lament the end of the rivalry. Maybe the Dice Gods were listening?>>5790931>>5790927>>5790925If Izirina Henzler wouldn’t speak to you, you decided, you would reach out to her by OTHER means. The first step was to spend much of your monthly allowance (less Muffins’ expenses) on ink, parchment, and envelopes. Each week, at the end of the last shared class, you retired to your room to write a letter, explaining your actions and intentions and, you hoped, communicating your feelings: that you did not consider Izirina a freak, a monster, or any other sort of abominable entity, but rather were simply concerned for a friend.
You left one…
>8And another…
>13…And another, and another.
Each day, you left them tucked into her desk (for she had no dorm, but rather lived beyond your reach in a restricted, private area high in the Mages’ Tower, with her adoptive mother). When you checked there the next day, the letter was always gone… But still, Izirina did not turn her gaze towards you, did not acknowledge them, let alone respond to them. You persisted, though, refusing to give up hope.
Still, the lack of answers ate at you. The shirin-inspired vision of the chimera-Izirina returned to you some nights, haunting you. You needed to solve this puzzle, needed to do this thing with an intensity that surprised you… And if Henzler would provide no answers directly, well, she had made snooping unavoidable.
You began with the school’s records—those publicly available in the archive. Enrollment records were easy enough to find. Izirina had begun tutelage off-the-records, you suspected, but even her early private training outside the auspices of the school left traces—adjustments to Mage proctors’ schedules to facilitate the tutelage of the Archmage’s daughter—or pet project, perhaps.
What WAS Izirina to her ‘mother’? If she was indeed some sort of… of CREATION, a chimera… Where did the terrifying old witch-woman get the ‘raw materials’ for such an experiment? You shuddered to think.
Unfortunately, the school’s records could not clarify matters of adoption… But, you knew where you could. charming the librarian with claims that you were researching your own human heritage for love of your time in Hawksong and curiosity about your familial ties (ha! If she only knew what You knew about your father, she’d never believe such fabrications…) you learned that the Royal Library of Hawksong, very much the epicenter of the city’s public square and a personal project of the previous Paladin King and of some wealthy human noble house or another, kept records of births, deaths, inheritances and adoptions. That became your next destination…
Every day, after class, for hours.
