Post by perspicacity on Oct 25, 2019 19:02:57 GMT -5
The willowy figure of Red Wizard Katernin Rvmekova silently glided up the stairs into the library. Apprentices hastily drifted elsewhere like dust motes in a long-cloistered room suddenly breached. With the exception of one solitary figure, seated and too engrossed in an esoteric tome to notice the flight of her fellow motes. Katernin smiled thinly, this particular mote would suffice.
"Umara, dear, I do so deeply regret the intrusion into your doubtlessly grave studies but I require your hands a moment." Katernin purred in passing, not pausing to even look at the aspirant, as she made for the door to her favored laboratory.
Umara would indeed suffice, she thought wisfully. A fellow illusionist, an academic who cultivated a particularly tedious mouse-like disposition to cloak her lofty ambitions. A dreammist indulgent, but meticulous with her habits, Katernin's informants had suggested. Katernin, herself, had long suspected she was one of Mythrellan's. When she gave her ego too much rein, even suspected she'd been assigned particularly to keep tabs on Katernin herself. With the glowing strife in Thay, Mythrellan doubtless suspected Dmitra Flass coveted her title and Katernin held no illusions that the Tharchion's patronage had escaped notice.
She cracked open the door, purred a few soft, sibilant syllables and several glowglobes awakened, illuminating the room brightly. She lifted her chin, turned her head expectantly and was rewarded with the sight of Umara at her elbow, answering summons.
"Yes, Omnipotence, how may I serve?" Umara queried, in tones a touch too staccato for Katernin's tastes, looking her too fully in the eye.
Katernin held the gaze, bolstered by a thin, serene smile, several seconds before Umara quailed, her eyes dipping a tiny fraction. Katernin seized the instant. "Yes, I know you prepare for the crucible, so close to donning the robes, yet you still wear them not. You think I know not you rankle under such a callous summons, as if you were yet untempered? That I should need your impertinence to gain such awareness? Be still. 'Tis my benevolence that beckons you, not some empty reminder of threshold not crossed. The duty, yes, is menial, but the subject is not. You could learn something if you master your pride." She replied crisply.
Umara looked down a brief instant, then, when her chin again lifted, her face was serene. "Thank you, Omnipotence, I am eager to serve." Her tones were silk, betrayed only by the tiniest flare of nostril.
"Better." Katernin replied with another thin smile. "Don a smock and gloves, ward yourself against acid and return posthaste." Katernin took a pair of steps into the small room, gazing along the walls a moment. "The duskwood trees in the Marsh of Tun have such an interesting and complicated aroma when burned. Not particularly pleasant, even with the faint sweetness the ancient putrescence grants it, but wholly interesting. Kindles thoughts almost preternatural. We should see to such wood being added to the fuel for the steambaths. Shouldn't be too....." The Red Wizard trailed off, turning her ice-blue eyes to Umara.
"Why are you still here? Smock, gloves, acid ward." She flipped a dismissive hand at Umara, remaining otherwise expressionless and inert, though Katernin's shadow on the wall behind moved, placing one hand upon its hip.