A bitter guardian

The rider in the portrait carries the greater width of his bulk across the chest and shoulders, instead of in his belly, but the beard isn't so different, the nose is impossible to mistake for another, and it's not so hard to imagine that the slightly unruly dark curls he has now would turn to rippling waves if he grew them out long again. "Hmm? Oh..." He glances down again, reading glasses on now, and pauses to study the old portrait with a mildly wistful expression. "I suppose I was hoping it made my face look thinner..." His gaze lingers over Veronica and Balthazar- ne, Belshazzar, riding closer together even in that illustration. The way Veronica is waving around a sword speaks volumes, that she was no wilting flower, but a fighter equal to her fellow apprentices. The way Horvath appears to be casually spearing some kind of dragon or wyrm without even looking is more than a little dashingly heroic, but he's unlikely to see it that way himself. His fingers stroke the page, once, then he sighs and begins to flip through to the section on purification rituals.

"Eldritch things aren't much discussed in the Encantus, but sometimes other sorcerers do summon things from Beyond without fully understanding what they're doing, and I've had to clean up the mess more than once. Knowing how to recover oneself and anyone else affected is important, because there's always some sort of fallout." The pages he settles on show a few illustrations of the very plant before them, with more detailed uses for the raw woody stems, as well as instructions on making potent distillations that are easier to keep and carry long-term.