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A transmuted mana crystal - shimmering and blue, like water trapped in glass - lay tantalizingly in her hand. The office, like a great library, sat hollow and dark. Even underground, even in part of the world she now called home, it reminded her more of her old employer's offices in Stormwind, in everything but scale. In the East it was fragmented, compartmentalized, stationed to prevent one person from getting information they shouldn't.
Ms. Fay's current paymaster didn't see things the same way.
She crushed the crystal, committing the same old sin, but without fear and guilt. It was hard to come by these days. The raw energy sprung out for an instant, returning to soak into her skin. The ocean blue sprung out in the runic lines cut into her arms - intricate, cryptic, and densely compacted.
With a flick of the wrist, the stark, sterile office burst open with life.
Animated quills and stamps busied about the room, flying to and from from self-levitating books, removing themselves from their shelves at the apportioned moment. Two banks of scrying bowls, thirty-two in all, had their water swirling, all as information was copied, recorded, calculated, and recalculated, summarized. The sum-total of intricate preparation, calibration, and accumulated error. Verronia sat down at the desk in the center of the room, watching as floating dust illuminated and arranged itself into glowing blue depictions of figures, events, and locations, shifting on cues so subtle as a quirk of the brow, or a shift of the finger.
As the reports, narratives and sheets began to accumulate, she placed her finger to an incomplete rune carved into her temple. Seared a long time ago, and visible at all times, unlike the others, it fit well with a similarly seared mark on her index finger, placed there to complete it before it too showed color.
"Can you hear me?"
A transmuted mana crystal - shimmering and blue, like water trapped in glass - lay tantalizingly in her hand. The office, like a great library, sat hollow and dark. Even underground, even in part of the world she now called home, it reminded her more of her old employer's offices in Stormwind, in everything but scale. In the East it was fragmented, compartmentalized, stationed to prevent one person from getting information they shouldn't.
Ms. Fay's current paymaster didn't see things the same way.
She crushed the crystal, committing the same old sin, but without fear and guilt. It was hard to come by these days. The raw energy sprung out for an instant, returning to soak into her skin. The ocean blue sprung out in the runic lines cut into her arms - intricate, cryptic, and densely compacted.
With a flick of the wrist, the stark, sterile office burst open with life.
Animated quills and stamps busied about the room, flying to and from from self-levitating books, removing themselves from their shelves at the apportioned moment. Two banks of scrying bowls, thirty-two in all, had their water swirling, all as information was copied, recorded, calculated, and recalculated, summarized. The sum-total of intricate preparation, calibration, and accumulated error. Verronia sat down at the desk in the center of the room, watching as floating dust illuminated and arranged itself into glowing blue depictions of figures, events, and locations, shifting on cues so subtle as a quirk of the brow, or a shift of the finger.
As the reports, narratives and sheets began to accumulate, she placed her finger to an incomplete rune carved into her temple. Seared a long time ago, and visible at all times, unlike the others, it fit well with a similarly seared mark on her index finger, placed there to complete it before it too showed color.
"Can you hear me?"
