Act 1: A Ray of Hope
In between tons upon tons of books containing pamphlets full of medical knowledge, a sudden heartily yawning emerged from down below the muffled voice buried under papers depicting lizardkin anatomy. Every paper showing the organ structure of Lamias, Kobolds, Frilled Lizards, Salamanders as well as Drakes was thoroughly written full of tiny scribbled notes pointing to various organs explaining barely readable the risks of cancer in these regions. A silent cursing later a dark-green scaled arm emerged out of the ocean of papers filling up the way too tiny room to the brim, grasping aimlessly like a freshly raised zombie for anything to lay hands on. Shoving aside the papers the arm eventually found something solid in the rustling sea; a small tower of huge cheaply bound tomes. Grasping the shore to safety the arm struggled to get its remaining body above the paper level the overtired-looking head of a female kobold appeared, a softly glowing halo hovering statically above her head. Standing finally firm on the wooden floor the lizard continued to yawn and scratched her scaled upper chest. Her piercing orange eyes looked around in a mixture of confusion, self-disappointment and grumpiness.
You did it again, did you, Bianca? You are a medical student for Bronze's sake, you should know better than that. You should be better than that not working until absolute exhaustion but preserving your energy for the big day.
A second voice woke up in the back of Bianca's mind, the voice that made all this possible in the first place, her connection to the Veil; The arcane spirit calling himself Galen. He immediately began letting their shared magic flow through her cold-blooded body warming it up to working temperatures with coordinated waves of healing magic. The stiffness faded, her legs grew strong; The tiredness was gone. Bianca sighed silently and projected her silk-smooth voice inwards and towards her bound companion.
<Galen ... as much as I appreciate you taking care of me, please let me one single time suffer for my recklessness. Our magic should heal others, not make our life easier.>
Bianca held her head simulating a hangover, a state she never experienced since she bound her soul to Galen's. Galen chuckled slightly, very much knowing how much his intervention annoyed his host.
<And let you slip and fall back on the ground? The balance of your legs was poor, you could have hurt your marvellous snout.> His voice grew softer <I will let you have a rough morning after we finish our goal. I desire that you, your brother and his partner can soon move out of this dirty hole. You two deserve so much more for being so close to developing a method to fully erase malevolent cancer cells without harming the patient. So please->
Bianca stretched her small frame aiming to let her shoulders and neck crackle satisfactorily, but her joints ran smooth. She sent a fierce yet soft glare to Galen and took afterwards a glance around as if she had never gone into her home in the first place. The dirt hole, Galen referred to, was Bianca's and her brother Denton's base of operation; their study room. And everything they legally owned.
If you can call that a study room ... I need to tidy up our one-room domicile. Maybe I can even find our bed, which should be located somewhere around here - or the disgusting hole in the ground, dug by our landlord to act as our toilet. All I can see are books, books and even more books; every single one we lent from libraries all around Leaston, and all of them are already overdue. This has to work soon, or we will end where most kobolds will end up. Throat-deep in debts accepting every job as miserable or degenerate it might be ... No!
<I promise you, Galen, I will get us out of here, us and my dear bro - where is he?>
Bianca glanced over the paper-filled room in search of the trace of a scale belonging to her albino brother.
<Maybe he went o->
<He wouldn't. Even he can keep his nature under control in these dire times. If I have to, he can do it too.>
Galen vanished deeper into Bianca's consciousness, trying to hide from her anger. He grew silent, giving her room to think.
Bianca fought herself through the book thicket in search of Denton, trying to make out his presence. As the room was barely bigger than ten square meters, her search quickly fruited and she found her brother leaning against an even older-looking tower of mouldy books.
Bianca took a moment to enjoy witnessing her brother being so calm and collected, the ivory head resting on his flawlessly scaled knees. He was a sight to behold; Regardless of their poor background, his scales were always flawless. Not even a single spot disrupted the perfection that was the kobold's body. Bianca was tempted to ruffle Denton's feathery occiput but instead stroked over the orange feathers growing out of her long neck while basking at her brother.
The albino's eyes were closed, and his breath was deep and regular. Denton felt as if he was there with her and at the same time not at all.
The voice of Galen rose once more in Bianca's mind. <Look Bia, your bro is doing it again; Venturing out in seek of answers.>
Bianca rolled her eyes, trying to conceal her admiration for her brother <He surely is carefree ... So sure I will heal the sickish feeling he will get when he successfully overstretched his mind ... again. I mean bro is right ... but still.> and sat down in front of Denton awaiting his return.
It hit Denton hard; I can feel it every day. I already did my part and developed and wrote down the necessary instructions to utilize my healing powers to multiply living matter in a specific spot. But his part as the destroyer, the Labicer holding the power of degradation, is even more crucial and delicate than my part could ever be. He has now been searching in the Veil for nearly two years, seeking to find an answer on how to utilize his power with pinpoint accuracy. His uncoordinated touch destroys matter and doesn't discriminate between friend and foe; Nothing gets spared.
What we need is either a way to apply a field covering selective perishment or a method to aim with precision into the corrupted matter igniting the destructive magic only at the desired point. Either one would do it, but the field-effect method would be way riskier in destroying benevolent matter being similar on a molecular level to the cancer cells.
I just hope ... No, he knows what he is doing. Bro wouldn't overstretch his mind in too many ways risking an Arcburn; He is a careful and good-looking kobold. Burning out his powers wouldn't suit him.
Just when Bianca's mind slowly derived into her dream world, she got pulled back into the here and now by a sudden movement. Denton's eyes were now open wide, his red irises glowing with excitement, his maw slowly forming a victory grin. Denton's whole body trembled in a mixture of excitement and newly self-applied pressure.
"Sister! I think I did it! I found the bridge across the river!"
