where you draw the line

[ertia]

Kithabel is sitting on the flat top of the tallest tower of her palace, forcing the rain to decline to fall on her, taking a break insofar as she ever takes a break. She has no constructive ends to pursue right now, so she's playing with the lightning in the clouds overhead. She doesn't want to try taking a direct lightning strike yet - she could probably take it, but only probably - but she can tell it to arc here and there in patterns, she can ball it up and watch it roll through the air, she can make it turn colors. She's making sure none of it hits the town, and if it starts a fire in the woods she'll take care of it, but at the moment it's a toy.

Comments

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

A figure appears in the air with a CRACK. He then falls through the crack, the other side of which shows a distinct lack of thunderstorm, and commences yelling for most of a second while he falls out of view. Then he levitates back up toward the top of the tower, while audibly muttering, "Not again."
A metallic plot device in his hands whirrs and beeps, then explodes twice.

[ertia]

Kithabel levitates to her feet, abandoning her lightning, to see what's going on.

"Where'd you come from? What are you doing here? Stop exploding things near my castle, please."

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

"I didn't do that"—pop, hiss—"this thing just has an inconvenient conception of what working properly means. I am Skeeve, yes the Skeeve, and where am I?"

[ertia]

"My palace. I'm afraid I haven't heard of you but I'm a comparatively new flier; I claim that town over there and the immediate otherwise-unclaimed environs, we're in the Sunlit Satrapy of Tanree. What's the thing?"

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

"The thing's a D-Hopper. It does teleportation, and once in a while it goes where you tell it to."

[ertia]

"What did you do, steal that from some sorcerer who doesn't like you?" asks Kithabel.

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

"No, it's just an outdated model.
As long as I'm here, I don't suppose there's anything that requires a wizard, is there? Invading armies, inconvenient laws of physics, that kind of thing."

[ertia]

"...Outdated...? Wizard? I don't know what you're talking about."

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

"Wizard, magician, practitioner of the mysterious arts...you're flying, yourself. Do you just not use the word here?"
And she's staying dry; that's no mean trick. Being soaked by the rain can't be good for image, so Skeeve creates an illusion disguising himself as himself. This does precisely nothing to change the actual degree of wetness, but appearances are everything.

[ertia]

"I'm a sorceress." She doesn't seem at all fazed by his illusion. "And if there's sorcering to be done in the immediate area I'm on call, I said I claimed that town over there. Let's not fight over it, okay? Are you a nomad or do you have your own territory?"

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

"Localized territory per sorceress? That's an interesting system. Like having court magicians without the court attached, I guess.
I had territory for a while, eventually people started seeking me out for solutions, now I'm a magician for hire. Don't worry; I'm not going to fight over your town."

[ertia]

"...Where are you from?"

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

"Originally Klah, currently based out of the Bazaar on Deva. This thing has quite a range on its teleportation; I'm not surprised to have never heard of Tanree."

[ertia]

"Okay, I haven't memorized world geography in any detail, but if you have enough momentum to speak fluent Reesh while not having heard of Tanree before I should have heard of you even if you were a hermit sorcerer from Aundacel. Can you point to either of those places on a globe? I have a globe."

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

"Probably not. I'm from a different dimension; did I not mention that?"

[ertia]

"Youuuuu did not mention that."

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

"Oh. Mentioned.
Got to say, if this world doesn't have dimension travelers it does help my ego recover from not having been heard of here."

[ertia]

"I don't even know how many centuries of unbroken momentum it would take to do that! But you're not actually a sorcerer, are you? You're some other... thing."

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

"Magician, yes. Magic is the same in every dimension I've been to, with the willpower and the replenishing energy and the getting gradually more powerful. Is that what you mean by momentum?"

[ertia]

"...Mostly? I'm not sure what you mean by replenishing energy."

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

"Using too much magic at once is tiring, but you can draw on ambient magic to recharge. You don't do that here?"

[ertia]

"No. The more magic you use the more of it you can use. I don't sleep more than five hours at a time so I don't run out of momentum too much overnight."

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

"That's...definitely not normal. There are magicians who don't sleep as much, but I've never heard of anyone losing any of their powers by sleeping. I must be farther than I thought."

[ertia]

"Most people don't develop enough momentum to fly. People are going to think you're a sorcerer, if you fly around. Or a lapsed one who kept flight. But you're accustomed to everybody in all the places you've been being able to use your kind of magic?"

[off_to_be_the_wizard]

"Theoretically able, yes. Barely anyone does, or magic would be a much less attractive career. Does everyone here practice it?"