A Matter for Magic [MadEmperor, Imperfect_M]

[DragonSong]

@MadEmperor @Imperfect_M

[Continued from here]


It was well passed noon by the time the maid who had brought their tea came into the parlor to inform Grav and Kiara that Lord and Lady Hallis had located an alchemist in the city who may be able to assist them.

"She's being escorted here," she explained, "should be due at the front door within the hour. Lord Hallis will introduce you when she arrives."

As she ducked her head and scurried back out, Kiara gave a low sigh of relief and shot Grav a quick smile. "Thank gods. Shouldn't be too much longer now and someone will be able to take a proper look at you."

The parlor they were seated in had a wide window along one wall that allowed them to see out onto the lane that led up to the townhouse's front door, and Kiara shifted a bit on the chaise to try to get a better view, one leg jiggling anxiously as they waited.

[MadEmperor]

Grav sighed in a strange kind of relieved anxiety. He was happy to be able to finally get some answers. At the same time, he was afraid of what those answers could be. Would there be no cure? Would this keep advancing until he was something else? Would his mind be next?

He looked in her direction, his eyes full of anxiety. Gone was the carefree adventurer she had met in that inn on the road to Selevea. "Is it... weird that I'm even more worried now? Because it feels like answers are going to somehow make this more--I dunno, real."

[DragonSong]

She tried to give him an encouraging smile. "No, mate, I don't think it's weird." She opened her moth, then paused, wondering if what she was going to say would be empathetic or just...self-centered.

Fuck it. May as well give it a try.

"Listen, you...saw what I was like with my Da. It's not great. But—but it was worse before I knew, y'know? When I was little, and different, but I didn't know why. I don't—I don't know what answers you're gonna get, but...I think answers at all will help."

[Imperfect_M]

--------
Serendipity
Summervale
Windfall Village
---------
"If I had a silver coin for every time an old colleague asked me to examine a Connlaothan, I'd have two silvers..." grumbled the Halfling as she continued to put more things into her backpack. "Not a lot, but strange it happened twice..."

Tathfheithleann's enchanted backpack thankfully could hold up to an entire alchemy field lab being stuffed into it. The dimensional space within its sturdy canvas held far more volume than a backpack fit for a child would allow. In it went boxes and boxes of equipment, potions, ingredients... Anything that the little mage thought she might need for this first visit. The person on the other end of her Sending Stone had frustratingly few answers for her.

The Halfling mage approached her teleportation circle, shouldered her bag, and threw her cloak over one shoulder. One should always account for the weather, after all. The circle set itself aglow with a soft blue light as it awaited her instructions.

"Arca," she commanded.

--------
Serendipity
Arca
Undisclosed Apartment
---------
The promise of a mage from Summervale arriving in Arca "within the hour" was as if a madman promised the world over. Or so it would have sounded. The art of magecraft and its commonality in Serendipity opened the door for many trades, utilities, and luxuries alike. Teleportation circles were expensive in ingredients and difficult to maintain on a large scale, making them next to impossible for infrastructure or public mass transit... But if one could afford the space and the circle, such travel made life a far easier and safer experience. And Tathfheithleann had both.

She reappeared with a flash of light and the crackling of static in a circle exactly identical to the one in her workshop. This, too, was a shop of her own, though smaller and used primarily for storage.

"Welcome back," called a disembodied voice, one that mimicked the Halfling's own.

"Can't talk, nobles are waiting on me," Tathfheithleann said to the empty air. "Keep the sigils warm, I'm not staying long."

"As you wish," the voice replied.

--------
Serendipity
Arca
The Halli Family Estate
---------

Kiara and Grav, what conversation they were having, would be politely interrupted by a maid to announce the arrival of the alchemist. Behind Lord Hallis walked someone about the height of a Human child, but even at a glance it was clear that this one had the proportions of a fully grown person, just scaled down to a four-foot height. Not a Human at all; but a Halfling from far-flung Summervale. From dress to mantle, her clothing was decorated with sigils and circles of some kind, and comically attached to her back was a rather simple canvas backpack. Even from her diminutive height, the Halfling scanned over the room and those in it with soft purple eyes.

"Tathfheithleann of Summervale," was the name she was introduced by.

[MadEmperor]

Grav had seen a halfling exactly, well, never. He had learned everything he did know about them through hearsay. He would have even had a thousand rude question... if his mind wasn't thoroughly preoccupied with his present situation. Some things were just more pressing than curiosity and wonderment.

The first unusual thing Tathfheithleann would notice about him was his decidedly un-Connloathian acceptance of magical assistance. Sure, he looked nervous, but that seemed more like general anxiety than anything directed at her. The second thing was the color of his eyes; they were red.

"I can't say that I'm glad to meet anyone under these circumstances, but... thanks for coming," he said nervously.

"Oh!  And I'm Grav. Err, Caviin." A Serenian surname? That would be the third thing.

[DragonSong]

Kiara got to her feet and nodded politely, though she was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. "Kiara," she introduced herself with a little wave. "Thanks for ah, turning up on such short notice."

She looked between the two of them, biting her lip. "Did someone tell you what—what happened?"

[Imperfect_M]

Tathfheithleann's violet eyes ran Grav up-and-down (or rather "up-and-up") as if to scan him for any symptoms or signs that would give insight into his condition. She got straight to work and straight to business. Down went the backpack and out came the tools.

It was a comical sight seeing a Halfling pull the equipment for a poison control center or a laboratory out from such a small backpack. Plenty of the cases she drew forth from the canvas bag folded open into racks, trays, and other sort of organizers for everything from scalpels to vials of gods-know-what.

"Did someone tell you what-... What happened?" Kiara asked her.

"The mage who sent me the message was vague on details," she responded in a deadpan contrasted by her high, chirpy soprano. "From what I understand, you're supposed to be dying. But you aren't, and that's what has everyone worried."

The Halfling mage put on a pair of silk gloves. As soon as she drew them snug over her hands, sigils on the backs of both set alight in soft hues of blue and green.

"Sit down somewhere I can take a look at you," she said to Grav before briefly directing her attention to Kiara. "And tell me what happened."

[MadEmperor]

"D--dying?!" Grav's eyes went wide as he practically fell into a seat. "Who said anything about dying?!"

"And why are you asking her? I'm right here. You know, the patient," he grumbled, becoming irritated.

"What happened is that I got stuck by a couple of manticore quills, and for some reason that prompted the crooked healer that treated us to dose me with something using his freaky mutant reverse leeches. And now my body is changing somehow. Hence the red-eyed Connloathian."

[DragonSong]

Kiara moved forward to put a hand on Grav's shoulder automatically, hoping the touch might be grounding or offer some sort of comfort. It didn't take her long to second-guess the action though, and she pulled her hand back and clasped both tightly in front of her body.

"I mean...yeah, that's the long and short of it," she agreed with Grav's summary. "We were hired to deal with the manticores, but they were...not normal. Smarter, more venomous, bigger. And they hunted in a pack, which I've never seen before."

[Imperfect_M]

Grav's irritation didn't even slow the little Alchemist's roll as she listened to his description and Kiara's agreement. But yet somehow, amidst the young man's emotion, the Halfling appeared just a hair and a half more tired than she was a moment ago. Tathfheithleann was not known for her bedside manner, nor her poker face.

She approached Grav and immediately cupped his face with one hand only to pull his face down to her height. Even when sitting, most Humans were still taller than her. With the other hand she wove delicate, tiny sigils in the air. A circle formed at the end of her fingertip and she held it over the young man's eye. The Halfling peered into that circle, then hovered it over his other eye to repeat the gesture.

"Believe it or not, you're the second Connlaothan boy with outlandish powers I've examined," Tathfheithleann idly commented as she studied Grav's eyes.

She flicked her hand like putting out a match and the tiny magic circle vanished, winking out with a mote of light. The little mage tapped her thumb against her middle and ring fingers in some arcane gesture before returning to her admittedly aggressive examination of Grav's condition. She traced her middle finger along his facial structure, following the lines on the boy's countenance as if to remember the shape of his face.

"Manticore quills and... Reverse leeches?" asked the little mage. "Actually-... Shush a second."

With a gesture many would describe as a "sleight of hand," the Halfling had the young Connlaothan boy's chin pinched between two fingers. She opened up his lips and out came that tiny, glowing magic circle again.

"Hold still," she commanded. "Hard for me to get a good look if you're talking or moving around."

[MadEmperor]

Closer examination of his eyes revealed a few flecks of blue left over from his natural color, which were slowly shrinking. His mouth, on the other hand, was perfectly normal except that his canine teeth seemed just a little too sharp. The contours of his face revealed even less, but for the fact that he had that symmetry going on that humans seemed to find appealing.

Further examination would require him to disrobe. He would probably be fussy about that, but that was just how such things went. Thankfully, he was being cooperative so far.

[DragonSong]

"Should I, um...?" Kiara hovered uncertainly, wringing her hands—at least until she realized that she was doing it, when she quickly locked them together behind her back.

"I feel like I'm just going to get underfoot," she told Grav apologetically. "I should, y'know, probably excuse myself?" She looked the the alchemist for confirmation, feeling supremely awkward.

[Imperfect_M]

"Just don't touch anything and you'll be just fine," Tathfheithleann said to Kiara, though her eyes remained firmly locked on her work.

The Halfling reached into empty air as if expecting to grab something from it, and out of that empty air appeared a scroll neatly bound in a ribbon. She pointed at it, still not taking her eyes of her work, and commanded:

"Take notes."

On command, the floating vellum obeyed. The ribbon untied itself, the scroll unfurled, and words began to simply write themselves on the page in neat Serenian script.

Tathfheithleann stepped back and clapped her hands together, sending tiny sparks of green from between them. She turned her hands over and opened them, revealing a glowing shape like that of a piece of paper surrounded by glyphs and runes. The mage held her hands like she were framing Grav for a portrait, all the while looking through that screen of glowing green. The spell she wove was one that allowed her to see through "layers" of the target. Clothing, skin, and even down into the body's tissues and organs. The spell's only hang-up was that it could not pierce magical barriers, but it -would- highlight them if it detected any.

"Start with the 'crooked healer' and 'reverse leeches," Tathfheithleann ordered. "We'll go from there."

[MadEmperor]

"His name is Anton Volke. Aneas--err, Master Hallis told us that he's a life mage and alchemist and a friend of the family."

His skin appeared normal, except for three places. First, his shoulders had extra hair coming in, almost like sparse fur, and a few irritated spots along the top. His arms had what appeared to be slits in the skin just above the elbows. Lastly, his tailbone area was oddly swollen.

"He applied leeches to suck out the poison, but instead they pumped something into my blood. He had evidently mutated them like he must have altered the manticores."

His musculature was clearly stronger, with unusual muscle growth along his elbows and tailbone. His skeleton brought it all into focus. The spots on his shoulders were where a few bony spikes were forming just under the skin. His elbows had grown a retractable spur of bone with a hollow spike for delivering venom. And his tailbone was... well, extending into a tail.

[DragonSong]

"So...what exactly are you doing?" Kiara asked as it's something like wary curiosity as she stepped back to give the two of them room and found herself just sort of hovering around the other side of the parlor's chaise. "Can you...I dunno, reverse it? Or stop it? Whatever it is..."

[Imperfect_M]

As Grav explained the context of his situation, the floating vellum nearby Tathfheithleann dutifully transcribed everything he was saying. Every stutter, every syllable, every word. The Halfling on the other hand was still peering through the paper-sized field of whatever it was she had conjured between her hands.

"Field notes," she said to no one in particular, and out of thin air conjured another vellum to write her notes in order. "Connlaothan, Human, male, young by the looks of him. Shoulders are growing shaggy hair, thicker than Human body hair. Skin has split above both elbows towards the shoulders. Coccyx elongated, tissues around lower back irritated. Ulna warped into a pointed shape; looks similar to a spike. Draw it."

On-command, the vellum transcribing her notes drew a quick diagram of the image in Tathfheithleann's mind. Tathfheithleann herself did not seem very bothered by seeing the changes in Grav's body. This was not her first rodeo and, given her line of work, probably wouldn't be the last either.

"So... What exactly are you doing?" Kiara asked the Halfling mage. "Can you-... I dunno, reverse it? Or stop it? Whatever it is..."

Tathfheithleann pinched her index fingers and thumbs and pulled her hands apart, dispelling the field she once held in front of her. The field notes vellum rolled itself back up and bound itself in a red ribbon, then winked out of existence in a puff of smoke and a flash of light.

"Just writing down what's happening to him," explained the mage. "And I'm not that kind of healer. Whatever's happening to you isn't the field of study I work in; the most I can do is put notes together for the healer who does know what to do."

She took Grav by the arm and extended the young man's hands out, turning his arm this way and bending his elbow.

"No pain at all when I do this?" she asked.

[MadEmperor]

Grav was very disappointed to hear that this was just an examination. He frowned; he had hoped for some kind of treatment. What she was seeing was frightening enough without having to wait for another specialist. Just what was he becoming?

"No, it doesn't hu--" Bending his elbow a certain way triggered the hollow spike--stinger--to spring out. His eyes widened in shock. "W-what the hells is that?!"

[DragonSong]

Kiara actually squeaked, eyes going wide as she jumped back a step instinctively. "What in all gods' names?!"

She quickly coughed, feeling guilty for the reaction, and shot Grav an apologetic look. "I mean, ah...that's...that's new."

[Imperfect_M]

The stinger on Grav's elbow let fly like a spring-loaded blade. The visceral sound of its extension and the punching of cloth was so sudden that Tathfheithleann loudly yelped in shock. She hopped back, her hands reflexively pulling to her shoulders as if expecting the bone spike to suddenly explode if she had touched it further. Though as quick as her reaction was, her shocked expression dulled back into her usual deadpan after only a few heartbeats of tension.

"S- Stop moving it-! Stop waving around!" she barked as she tried to collect her thoughts.

The mage moved forward to continue her examination. She performed the same gesture to call forth her illusory field she used to examine Grav the first time. Though she was eyeing over the bone spike, she was careful not to touch it. Her gloves would protect her, but she was not going to go poking around if she noted anything abnormal. The spike itself was hollow like that of a stinger, though what venom glands it was meant to be connected to, she had no idea.

"It looks like a-... A stinger, or a fang," she reported, more to her notes than Grav or Kiara. She continued to peer through that paper-size screen framed by her fingers. "Doesn't look like it's connected to anything though... It's just... Empty."

[MadEmperor]

Grav gave Kiara a frightened look. He was slowly becoming something monstrous, like in his nightmares. In that moment, he wished he had never left home or gone on any adventure.

"Do either of you have any idea what kind of creature Volke mixed into me?" he asked the both of them. "If that's even what he did."