The Orkhan Patient [Imogen]

[Kala Leukos]

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The Tranquil Gardens, Kalzasi
21st of Frost, Year 121 Steel

Doctor Urs Wardell had set her up on a list of volunteers to help when the Tranquil Gardens was short-staffed, and so here she was, using what skills she owned to lighten the workload for the professionals. She wasn't sure if he liked her, but that was hardly the point of taking a mentor. He seemed to think her skills were sufficient to be able to help with minimal supervision.

He was the only one who knew her social status outside the hospital. She preferred it that way so people would let her help rather than deferring to her for fear of upsetting a young noblewoman. Kala had come here to learn and she learned best through experience, so she didn't mind that she was standing at a desk like some hostess at a restaurant helping with patient intake at the ward so the regular person could have lunch in the canteen rather than at the desk, which wasn't relaxing or sanitary.

Her hair was swept back and bound up under a kerchief to keep it out of her way and whatever she wore under her scrub robes was invisible to the eye. She was pale, with large eyes, and many thought her younger than her nineteen (and a half) years for it, but there was a sort of wisdom to her that some read as weird and others read as old.

In a rare quiet moment, she was tidying up behind the desk so the person she was helping out would return to a clean work space. That tended to help her relax, and she hoped it would be the same for others. It was one of many meditative practices she had acquired on the long road from childhood temper tantrums to the general serenity she wore like a cloak anymore.

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[Imogen]

Imogen Ward had gone almost an entire day after rebuffing Sivan's suggestion to seek a consultation at the Tranquil Gardens before giving in.

In a way, she was a victim of success. The alchemist's tincture had proven miraculously effective- it wasn't so much that she didn't feel cold, she still felt the chill in the air, the frosty winds blowing off that damnable lake- but Sivan's admixture had made a world of difference in terms of comfort. Now, rather than spending each moment on the street wishing someone would put her out of her misery, she simply felt as though it were a brisk morning in mid-Ash. Finally, she could feel her arms and legs and skin again.

And this was the problem. Whatever had caused her scales to act up had only gotten worse, and now that she wasn't numb she was itchy. After a nearly sleepless night, the Orkhan girl was finally prepared to accept that some problems absolutely could not be ignored. By the time she had located and walked to the corner of the Commons near the lake, her scales had hardened up to the point where they were actively restricting her movement, and no amount of pleading would make them sublimate properly. Thus dreadfully slightly inconvenienced, Imogen found herself all but limping up to the front door of the hospital, surrounded by the (rather subdued, in this Frost) gardens which gave the building its name.

Imogen stomped up to the door, but took a moment to collect herself (and scratch furtively at one particularly irritated patch on her side) before entering. Carina had warned her not to draw too much attention- though it was doubtful the Order had the resources to sit in front of a hospital watching the intake, and just as doubtful that they'd bother to question her about it back in Zaichaer, magic healing or not, it was obviously best to avoid giving anyone a story more exciting than "an orkhan woman walked in".

Inside, she was greeted by a reception area, mercifully empty of waiting patients, and a staff member of some sort at the desk. The woman had an odd look to her eye, but Kalzasi itself was full of odd looks. Who knew there were so many avialae anywhere in the world, for one thing? Very pale, anyway. She approached the desk, her gait only a little stiff, and offered one of her famous smiles.

“Aha, good afternoon. I seem to be experiencing a... minor dermatological problem, and was hoping I could get a consultation?”

[Kala Leukos]

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An Orkhan woman walked in might not be all that unusual at the Tranquil Gardens given the Orkhan population of the city, but so far it was the highlight of Kala's time at the desk. Soon enough, she would be relieved and go to see what rounds she could do in the meantime. The nurses were overworked, of course, and so she plied what skill she had. Some of it was cheating—she could make some more educated diagnoses using her Rune of Semblance in conjunction with her growing knowledge of how bodies worked.

"Good afternoon," she greeted, amiable, but not saccharine. Her pale brows furrowed a bit in thought.

"I see. The wait for a doctor might be a while," she admitted, glancing over her shoulder. "Ah. But a nurse can see you straight away."

"Could you take this one, Kala? I've a mountain of paperwork to take care of."

"As you wish," she said.

"Thank you."

Kala nodded and turned back to the Orkhan woman.

"I am Kala. I will give you a consultation, and if I can't help you, I will pull in a doctor. If you will come with me?"

She led the Orkhan woman to a small room that smelled only faintly of harsh cleaners. There was enough heat from whatever system of steam and dragonshards kept the place temperate that the window was cracked so the air didn't get overly cloying.

"Please, have a seat and make yourself as comfortable as possible." She sat as well. "What can you tell me about your problem?" She took out a notepad and prepared to take notes, while also engaging her Rune of Semblance so she might slowly get a sense for what was out of whack with the woman's system.

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[Imogen]

“Of course. Thank you, Nurse Kala.” Imogen followed the young woman back to one of the private examination rooms, noting the astringent flavor of the air. Heavy-duty stuff they were using here, and pretty expensive. A hospital had to take pathogens seriously, and she supposed the entire building spoke to a surplus of funding.

“Well, my name is Imogen, and I'm up from Zaichaer, visiting the city for a few weeks on business. First time I've ever been here, got in just five days past. Almost immediately after I get here, my skin got irritated and my scales became raised and stiff.” Although there were visible patches of scale on her neck and face, Imogen pulled up a sleeve to display a stretch on her forearm, which were indeed jutting off her arm, by over an inch in some cases. Orkhan scales naturally melded with the skin, rising or receding as the individual's mood and health changed, but it appeared that the skin around the scales had grown red and irritated, as though they'd been exposed to something.

“I did take an elixir yesterday,” Imogen allowed, “Which makes the cold around here less obnoxious. But the irritation started before then.”

Imogen's aura was somewhat larger than the average, like one might expect from an indifferent wizard, but it roiled angrily, like a candleflame a bored child was flicking gasoline on. It certainly seemed like the woman's being was aggravated by something. There was no real feeling of frustration from Imogen herself, though a stress-related illness didn't require anything like constant aggravation, so that might not mean anything.

“Someone suggested it might be an allergy? But I thought you got those as a child. I'm sure it isn't a curse, those wear off in a day or two. It might have been that fish I couldn't pronounce, I thought it looked like poison.”

[Kala Leukos]

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"Imogen," she acknowledged with a polite nod, and then began to listen intently.

While not officially a nurse, she was considered a volunteer knowledgeable enough and responsible enough to do things like this, and she had enough humility to ask for help when she was out of her depth rather than attempting to prove she could accomplish something when her failure might worsen a patient's condition. Her visual examination was augmented by the acuity of her senses through her Rune, and she didn't reach out to touch the skin yet. People were often uncomfortable with being touched, so she would avoid it unless necessary. She did try to put people at their ease; illness and injury were stressful enough.

She sensed a fiery aetheric pattern flowing through her veins that was not keyed into her own pattern; that must have been the elixir she spoke of, and it was indeed just keeping the chill out of her body, not causing any obvious reaction. Overall, she seemed healthy, but her body was definitely reacting to something and so she figured it was some sort of dermatitis, indeed, an allergic reaction as her friend had suggested.

"It does look like an allergic reaction," she said, looking up to make eye contact. "Many allergies appear in childhood, but it isn't uncommon for them to develop in adulthood. If you aren't a native of Kalzasi, then it is likely something in our environment has upset your body, something it hasn't encountered before. Whether it was the fish, the cold, or something else, I cannot tell without more testing, but I can prescribe you an ointment that ought to ease the itching and the reaction. If it was the fish, it ought to go away and not come back. If it's something else, it might return, and then we could do some investigating to see what the cause might be. I would also suggest that, despite the Kalzasern cold, you only take warm baths, perhaps adding colloidal oatmeal to soothe your skin, and use unscented moisturizers. Sometimes perfumes can irritate the skin as well."

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[Imogen]

An allergy? Well! You learned something new every day, even when it was about yourself and you didn't really care to learn it.

"Colloidal oatmeal? Really."

Skincare was truly a mysterious thing, Imogen supposed vaguely. Still, she knew that there were many useful antiseptic properties to honey, so why shouldn't other breakfast foods display healing properties? Did that make sense? She was going to have to check in with an expert about her novel theory of healing before she started rubbing fried eggs on open wounds, but the notion felt sound on a deep and spiritual level.

"If an ointment stops the itching, I'll accept it, and gladly. I really did not think I was allergic to anything- well, that isn't quite right, I had nasty rashes a while back, but we had a naturalist with us who soothed them as they showed up. Said it was probably the moss, or lichen, or whatever you call the green stuff in the caverns. Haven't seen a lot of cave mosses in Kalzasi so far, but I haven't been here that long."

In all honesty, Imogen had her doubts that the green stuff had anything to do with it. She did not like the Warrens, not even a little. It had felt at times like she was doing something wrong just walking across the caverns with her handful of sunlight, like a child passing a parent's bedroom in the dead of night with a candle, fearing to wake them. It wasn't a rational fear; much more powerful Sunsingers had gone much further down than her guard detail had taken her, but she had heard it said that everyone found their own special kind of paranoia in the depths.

"Well, I suppose I'll stick to foods I know, then."

[Kala Leukos]

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"It sounds strange, I know," she said with an almost rueful smile. But there were cures that came of scientific inquiry, magical healing, and folk remedy. To her mind, if it worked, it worked. "And I would say that the fact that it is causing a reaction on your skin means the allergen is something that you have touched or something in the air or water. It isn't always the case, but generally, an allergen causes a reaction where you encounter it, so the fish would have upset your stomach or perhaps caused swelling in your throat. Hopefully, the ointment and taking care of your skin will ease the itch. Sometimes, more time exposed to an allergen will allow your body to get used to it."

She spread her hands. There were so many variables to consider.

"If you would like, I can observe you more keenly through my Rune of Semblance. With a little time, I might suss out the culprit, but I don't want to delve too deeply into your aura without your consent." She took these things seriously, and the healers she most respected did as well. It was her duty to use what knowledge and skill she had earned to help patients make educated choices about their own health, as she hoped healers would do for her if she was the patient.

"Either way, I can get you the ointment, and that will hopefully be an end to it, but as you are already here." Again, Kala spread her hands. "The choice is yours whether you wish me to look more closely." There were some examinations of the body that were so intimate, there was often a chaperone present; that could be the case as well for what she might see in the woman's aetheric pattern given time and permission.

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[Imogen]

"Semblance? You're a mage, then?"

Well, there was a new one. Apparently mages in Kalzasi were so prevalent that they could afford to employ them as receptionists! Not that Imogen had anything against receptionists. Some of her best friends were receptionists. (And mages for that matter. Just not at the same time.)

Still, perhaps that made things less complicated. If Kalzasi were truly overflowing with mages, the chances that the Order's foreign ministry here could reasonably track anything was very slim. Imogen had learned a great deal about logistics from her time at the theater, and the first lesson was that an organization had to approach things in very specific ways for large amounts of data to be legible. The Tranquil Gardens, as she understood it, were funded by... one? more?... some number of the noble houses which ruled Kalzasi, none of whom were terribly invested in the Order's success at any rate, so the chances of systemic infiltration seemed low.

Well, in that case...

"I suppose I wouldn't object, if you happen to be able to see what's wrong, that would be a great load off my mind, even if the oatmeal works. I assume there's such a thing as patient confidentiality, yeah? In case anyone comes snooping around." That sounded like a non-suspicious thing to say. Doctors probably got approached by people snooping around a lot.

Imogen had already missed one spy that day as she made her way to the front door, so what was another?

"Before you start looking, I should mention that I've one Cardinal Rune, on the right breast, but I got that some time ago and I haven't done anything terribly strenuous with it lately. I doubt very much that it's related to my present suffering." She relayed this information confidently, demonstrating for the third time in as many days that if there are any great oracles left in the world, they have nothing to do with Imogen Ward.

[Kala Leukos]

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"Among other things," she said with a smile, "yes, I am a mage."

Kala considered the questions and warnings before responding.

"Your health is between you and those of us who work with you here. There are, I believe, a few instances whereby an investigator could petition the courts to demand some records of yours, but those would be extenuating circumstances. We take your privacy seriously. And thank you for the warning." She smiled again, then poured aether through her Rune of Semblance to open her senses up to Imogen's aetheric body.

"Ah, my twin has Reaving as well," she said, eyes slightly unfocused as she tried to focus with her mind's eye, her othersense. There was the unhealthy patina, and there, under her Rune, the heart wheel had an excess of energy that had it whirling out of sync with the rest of her. Whatever it was that had tripped up her body's natural defenses, it wasn't present in the room.

"Hm, let me..." She trailed off even as she began to scrive pictographs into the air with elemental energies. It was slow going as she was doing delicate work, linking ideograms of recognition and calm, and finally adding a sort of intuitive description of what was causing the problem. Finally, she finished and let her various magics rest. Blue eyes focused once more on the Orkhan woman. "All right. It was something in the air, riding around in drops of water so small we can't see them. I'm still not certain what it was but I tried to, ah... explain to your body that it isn't dangerous. So the colloidal oatmeal ought to start soothing things, and with any luck, it won't come back."

It would likely only last for a while as bodies were complex energetic structures, but she hoped it would act as a sort of inoculation and once the magic faded, the body would remember.

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[Imogen]

"Is that right?"

Maybe it shouldn't have been surprising, but the nurse's offhanded line about her twin was actually the most shocked Imogen had found herself since she came to the city of magic. She'd known plenty of elementalists, kinetics, the gods only knew how many idiots with a novice's understanding of curses, but this might be the first time she had heard of a Reaver outside the coven. Maybe that was just the nature of the initiation's obscene demands and danger, but she had never really considered it as something Circle mages might know but simply not... do very often.

It seemed almost wrong, frankly. Sure, the other runes granted access to complex and powerful crafts, but Reaving was supposed to be a vital connection to Ysadrin herself, wasn't it? What was left of the magic without the words and the sunlight? Just a bunch of magic weapons? No, perhaps she was engaging in unreasonable characterization of a twin she had never met. It was entirely possible that the people of Kalzasi kept that faith in some way.

"What do they use for a pact weapon, then? If that's not a sensitive question, or anything. I've met a number of mages from Kalzasi, but never another practitioner- I just assumed they were largely gone after, you know."

Kala had moved on to describe the circumstances of the allergy, which is of course why Imogen had come to the Tranquil Gardens in the first place, and therefore should undoubtedly be something she paid attention to, but...

"Well, that's wonderful news, thank you. Ah... if you don't mind, and I don't really want to pry, but where did your twin learn it, anyway?"