Rethais took a deep breath as he stepped into the small office, preparing himself for bad news. He had faced an awful lot of it lately, so really, he shouldn’t have been so worried. But this was a potential health issue, something Rethais couldn’t easily fix. And that was what was bothering him so much.
“Please, sit down!” Doctor Kaldi smiled as she picked up her tablet and pulled out her patient’s file. “Do not worry, please.”
With a grunt, Rethais sat down on the small, plastic chair. There was a bed behind him that he could have laid on, should the medic ask him to, but for now, the chair was fine.
“You seem stressed.”
“For obvious reasons…” Rethais muttered. “I am glad you called me back quickly. I noticed more… spreading… earlier.”
“May I see?”
Kaldi got up from her desk and inched towards Rethais. The Vice General towered over Kaldi, so she needed to grab a stool first. As she inspected the odd, dark mark on Rethais’s neck, she quickly realised that he was right. The odd bruise had spread. By quite a lot. She could see it now, no longer covered up by Rethais’s clothing-armour and his natural plating.
“Hm. That… Alright…” Kaldi didn’t finish her sentence. Instead, she got down, grabbed a small camera from her desk and took a quick photo of the afflicted area, before putting everything away and sitting back down.
“I take it that the news is rather grim.”
“The opposite, actually…” Kaldi smiled weakly as she flicked through the files on her tablet. “There is some marvellous news here. Whatever your problem is, it is most certainly not cancer, or any similar illness. Nor is it an infected insect bite…”
Rethais sighed, not feeling particularly relieved. “I need to know several things, Doctor Kaldi. What is this thing, am I at risk of ill health or death and, most importantly, is this infectious?”
“In answer to your second and last questions, no and no. In fact, the… affliction is the opposite of infectious. We could not get it to spread onto test matter. And the affliction does not seem to be… directly harming you…”
“But it is sore and painful.”
“Yes, but it is not killing you…” Kaldi tried to explain. “The problem is, we… do not know what it is doing… We do not even know what it is. I took the sample to every dermatologist I know, as well as several microbiologists and experts and we came up empty. All we can tell is, whatever it is, it is not Rethan in origin.”
“Do you know what its origin is?” Rethais asked, feeling more and more concerned.
“Ah… this is where things stop making sense. You see… we ran the samples through DNA matching. Just to see if it, well, matched with anything. And we came up with one single hit…”
Rethais grunted. “You seem very hesitant to tell me.”
“Well, yes, because all we got was a 25% match to one of the Dessaron. Not the one that is your sibling.”
“I am going to assume you mean Tenuk, since he was a Kronospast disguised as a Rethavok?”
“Nope. Whatever we are dealing with here is… deitic in origin. But not related to…”
Before Kaldi could finish, Rethais stood up, shaking his head. “Let me guess, it is somehow related to the Voidlord. Now that you mention it, the bruise appeared not long after he was very heavy-handed with me…”
“Well…” Kaldi stuttered. “I think… maybe you are jumping to conclusions…”
“Do you have any better conclusions?” Rethais tutted.
“Uh, no.”
“Do you have any recommendations on what I need to do in the mean time?”
Kaldi shook her head. “We still need to look into the removal process. You may require surgery, but we are looking into less invasive methods first. For now, just keeping the area covered seems like your best bet.”
“Is there anything else I need to know?”
“If there was, I would have told you.”
With a sigh, Rethais bowed. “Thank you. Apologies for my frustration.”
“No worries…” Kaldi muttered as she got up and opened the door for Rethais. “Keep safe…”