That mage you caught last night is starting to smell of ozone. There’s a feeling in the air like the afternoon before a summer thunderstorm, which is funny, seeing as it’s October and you’re keeping her - for the time being - in a basement.
And god, does she ever wish that storm would break: fingers twitching, teeth set against the bit in her mouth, pretty yellow eyes on your throat from the second you step through the door. Ring-in-ring of sorcerer gold, xanthous star-furnaces of pure and towering petulance.
If sore losing alone was enough to sublimate thought into action, this building would be a crater and your name would be an execration upon the lips of the living, fit only to be spoken by hungry ghosts, et cetera; but ‘the Art hath three cornerstones’, three levers by which the magician moves the world, and spite isn’t on the list. Something like one in five thousand practitioners can work with just two, something like one in fifty thousand manage something with one, and right now she’s operating with exactly zero. So here she sits, in her fulminating cloud of beckoned and unspent aether, seething.
You gesture with the tray in your hands. “You gonna try to ash me if I take that gag out for a second? I’m not risking somatics, too, so. Gonna be feeding you myself.” Shrug. “You know how it is.”
You actually feel her try to kill you for that, the swell and press of the aether against your skin. It passes. You wait. There’s a simple calculus here, hatred and mage-pride against the fact that twenty-odd hours is a long time to go without food, a real long time to go without water.
The wizard picks the wrong answer. Turns her head away in dignified - well, an attempt at dignified - silence, as if you and your stew are completely beneath her notice.
“Alright, then,” you announce, putting your foot on the bottom step of the basement stairs. “See you in another, I dunno, twelve, maybe fifteen hours. Holler if you need anything.”
You make it about, oh, two-thirds of the way up before the noises she’s making through her bit get pathetic enough to bring you back.
