Serene Aescrof

Serene, Third Wizard of the Empire of Theloss, is a beautiful eighteen year old girl and she's incredibly embarrassed to be so.

Last year she'd been eighty-three and spitting at how unfair it was that she'd never become First Wizard, for that title is held by an Elven wizard who'd been in his position since before her grandfather was born. She'd taken the title of Third Wizard forty years previously, a feat that had people impressed by her ambition and prowess, but since then she'd been stuck in her post, prevented from advancing by her peers' ridiculous lifespans.

She'd tried marrying her children into the Royal family to advance herself: her sons were rejected by the princesses of their generation, and her grandaughter, the awful girl, had rejected the prince who'd noticed her and ran off with a farmboy.

She'd tried political intrigues, seduction, hired assassins, anything to try dislodge the Second and First Wizards so she could take their positions, but with her life rapidly coming to its end she realised that what she really needed was more time

Thus the Youth Potion which she spent the last year inventing and which she'd succeeded brewing last night. She'd drunk it down, throwing caution to the wind and it had worked! She'd woken up this morning as young and as fair as she'd been the day she'd entered Magical University.

Unfortunately she's just discovered that Magic is a form of muscle memory and she's just wiped 75 years worth of magical memory right out of her body. She can read her own notes, yes, and recall the words intoned, but she can't conjure more power than the most humble cantrips from her fingertips.

She's decided to take a sabbatical to visit that awful granddaughter of hers before word gets out about her success, for she's not sure she could survive the embarrassment of looking the First Wizard in the eyes and telling him what she's done.