>>5922404>>5922405>>5922408>>5922421>>5922431>She'll get the bravery to deliver a speech that lets the magic world know what she was really thinking today.“Just–.. tell them how you really feel, my lady.” You reach up and poke at her backside with your finger, the ebb of magic flowing from your fingers and suffusing into her body. “You know, go off script a little. I’m sure that’ll be like a shock of ice water to your senses.”
“..Hmph. I see the thread. Clever.” Your master responds in quiet, before suddenly stomping your hand with her heel. You recoil back onto the stage, clutching your throbbing hand to your chest. “Don’t poke my ass again. Now..”
“Right. My apologies. Let’s cut the shit.” Your master leans into the electrostatic microphone on the podium, the whine of the condenser coils cutting through the ambient chitchat of the crowd. Your master’s voice is more familiar to you like this. “I do not intend to play the part of a show pony for the archmagi and their friends in high castles any longer. This farce of a ceremony has gone on long enough.”
You manage to shake off the pain from your hand enough to glance out from behind your master at the crowd–the vast, open capitol streets (widened after a failed revolution about seventy years ago) are host to innumerable faces, civilizations and magi alike. The front row includes foreign royalty, bigwigs in magic society, some members from off Saint August’s board of iudices..
“I hate it–all of it and all of you–this bubbling cesspool of corruption you call magical society, festering in the sun.” Your master’s voice drips not just with bitterness now, but with hatred. “You’ve shoved a rod up my ass and propped me up on stage as a puppet to fill out your history books. My study–my life’s work–is a name for you to write into some dusty tome and shut away with the rest of them. A political convenience to grant a witch that means nothing to you a title that means nothing to you.”
A few figures have stood from the edges of the stage to shush her off, but your master continues. “I refuse to continue dancing for you and your disgusting kingmaking games. What is worth it if you call me great if you don’t even believe it yourself? I know why you think I’m up here. The Ill-Fitting Witch, wearing garb too big for her, the apprentice who’s stolen the life of work of her master. My master. I.. I really wanted this, and it’s all just.. I know. I don’t deserve it. <span class="mu-i">He</span> will. Of fucking course he will. I'm filler. An in-between.”
