The fire burned for quite some time, and Corvan weathered it patiently. He was a strong magus. Not the most powerful, without doubt, but certainly a step above nine out of every ten others he met, rare as they already were.

Even still, he’d come close to death.

Had the sound of thudding and rolling not caught his half-asleep ears, he would have remained unconscious through the blast. Had his magic not come with a haste uncommon even to him, he would have remained unshielded as it tore him apart, and had his breath not stayed calm, cool and controlled, his yards-wide protective field would have been a death trap. Its interior being choked of air as his lungs turned the stuff to poison, its user suffocated by his own breaths.

But Corvan had been lucky, skilled and powerful all at once, that night. And so the fool’s weapon- for surely no magus strong enough to replicate it could have hidden their power from Corvan’s eye- had failed in its task.

Failed, and told him who his enemy was. One did not live as a magus with so many enemies as Corvan, and fail to develop the reflexive shielding that had kept him defended mere moments after he woke. And one did not keep from drowning in enemies without the knowledge of how to identify and kill them for their hidden attacks and subtle slights. It had, he had to admit, surprised him to use such skills on mere vagrants, but it was often the man one did not expect who landed a killing blow.

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He waited, for quite some time, until the fire had finally died to the cold. And then he waited a while longer. Finally Corvan forced the debris from himself, crawled out from under the ruin that had once been his home and laboratory, and snarled at the wreckage of it all. Corvan was forced to use his mere arm strength alone like some common labourer by then, his magic already depleted by the extended use.

He had not laid claim to large or impressive accommodations, he knew, but they had been his. His place of work, of rest. His home. His domain. To trespass within them was a crime that demanded punishment, to destroy them in such a way…Well, that demanded death. He watched their ruin progress at the touch of licking flames and coiling smoke, thinking.

The fire had died, eventually. But even at its wildest it was ice compared to the flames of his rage. They burned hotter with every step he took from the ruin.

And every step closer to finding the three imbeciles who’d dared to cross a magus.