The afternoon had quietly become the evening as Elise departed and headed back to her shop, box in hand. To tell the truth, it hadn't been an act of charity on her part. It'd been selfishness. People using an ill-suited focus irked her. It was just wrong. She imagined it to be the same sensation a tailor might get if they saw a bunch of people in ill-fitting clothes. But she was a reader and could feel how terrible each and every wand and staff she encountered truly was. She could feel the shoddy channels or the damage due to misuse. It was like an itch in the back of her mind that refused to relent. At times it got difficult to ignore. There was also the fact that running out of orders for new focuses was a situation that she would not tolerate. She'd let herself exhaust her supplies of stoneleaf or alcohol but running out of orders was not something she would let happen. If she was running low she'd go out and find some of the worst offenders whose ill-fitting wands had bothered her most and offer them way below market rate to make them a focus. For Elise money wasn't the aim of making focuses it was a byproduct. She worked hard to ensure she always had a solid backlog of orders to work through.

The southern gates loomed ahead of her and just as she was about to pass through them she was stopped.

"What business do you have in the slums?" a gruff town guard demand as Elise tried to head back into the city proper.

"Just delivering something to a client,"

"There's no real clients out there for any legitimate business, so how about you tell me what you were really selling,"

Three other guards smoothly sidled up behind her as the first guard was levying his accusations. It did not take a genius to see where this was going.

"You know full well I sell focuses and you know damn well there's nothing wrong with selling them in the slums or anywhere else for that matter," Elise spat back bitterly.

"Ease off with the attitude or you'll regret it. You look to me like someone selling stolen focuses. The punishments for that are pretty nasty. We can arrest you for that if you'd like. Now we're going to search you and if you make things difficult for us we can make things very difficult for you. And if you happen to have anything on you that shouldn't, well that's when things get fun,"

Her every instinct screamed for action, urging her to violence. The smug look in their eyes only served to fuel her anger. That look in their eyes, the way they moved and talked it all spoke of a belief of being untouchable. That was a belief that Elise so wished to forcibly debase them of. But attacking guardsmen wouldn't end well. Beating these uniformed robbers would only lead to escalation and fighting more guardsmen until things had escalated to the point that going back to the shop and continuing making things was no longer an option.

Through gritted teeth she hissed "Fine,"

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They lead her to a small room next to the city gate and started rifling through her pockets and patting her down. It was common to have a holster for your wand at your waist and Elise was no different except that it didn't contain a wand. The guard who pulled out the wand length iron rod from her holster gave her a confused look before setting it aside. Iron was peculiar in that spell thread couldn't penetrate it. You could cast spells at it and they'd have an effect but nothing you did could force spell thread into it. You could not burn channels into iron. Aside from the iron rod, they pulled out an assortment of different tools from her many pockets, they retrieved two rings from her fingers both spectacularly plain in appearance one was wood and the other was iron. But the object that drew their attention the most was the metal box, they leered greedily at its contents.

"We'll be confiscating this," they informed her.

"Fine, I expected nothing less. If that's all can I get my stuff and go?"

"One last thing; do you really have no focus with you?"

She was tempted to ask if they wanted to know because they were disappointed they couldn't steal it too but she held her tongue.

"I don't cast much magic. I'd never use one if I brought one with me so what would be the point?"

The guards studied her for a minute before finally allowing her to leave. She gathered her things including the focus the guards hadn't identified as a focus and slipped out into the city.

She was in a foul mood. She didn't need the money but she'd honestly rather see it melted down and pissed down the gutters than for it to go to those guys. Not that reporting them would do anything. Folks in the Lows generally didn't hold much in the way of political sway and the people in a position to do something about the behaviour of the guards typically couldn't care less. Thus the guards got to roam free and do as they liked. They were generally the worst criminals in the city. In a way, it was lucky she wasn't pretty. She limped her way towards her shop hoping someone, anyone would get in her way so she'd have an excuse to vent her frustrations on them.

As always loose threads of wild magic filled the air. They were the leftovers of spells half completed, spells dispelled, miscasts and spells cast with more thread than needed. Severed spell thread drifting through the air. It was an odd kind of magical pollution that only built up in places where spells were regularly cast. These loose threads would hit physical objects with all the force of a gentle summer breeze and since they could not enter the objects they would deflect away or brush past. Readers could feel them. They could use these collisions to get a sense of the objects around them. They could peer into a world of chaotic yet gentle motion of drifting threads that here and there would touch the real world. Elise closed her eyes as she walked and navigated by reading alone. She found it calming.

Animals and people had what was known as an internal weave. It was essentially a network of persistent stronger than normal spell thread inside them. Spell thread that came into contact with someone's internal weave would be severed, always. But readers could sense the internal weaves of others as well. The people of the Lows flowed about, busy with their lives and Elise could feel their movements. She could sense the rats in the basements and the birds in the air and all the fluttering wild magic in-between waiting to intangle itself in some unwary caster's spell pattern. She could feel the three men attack the young girl in a nearby alley. She stopped. Her eyes opened and narrowed. She had asked for someone to vent her frustrations on hadn't she?

"You'll do," she whispered as she turned and limped down an alley towards the altercation.