Elise tapped her quill impatiently against the rim of her ink well as she waited for her customer to finally say something of substance. It was a small, cramped and slightly dingy shop and Elise loved every inch of it, even when she did not love the customers. There was a counter that cut the room in half. On one side there were racks of decorated sticks waiting for her to turn them into a wand or a staff if someone picked them out. Most were rather bland and plain in appearance. This wasn't one of the more expensive establishments and everything tended towards utility and practicality over pageantry. A small table and two chairs took up most of the floor space on the customer side. On the other side were cluttered workbenches and cubby holes for papers and focus diagrams. The workbenches bore the weight of countless arrays of confusing tools and in-progress projects. At the very back was a narrow set of stairs leading up into her room above. Elise sat at the counter of her shop with parchment quill and ink to record what kind of focus her customer wanted, all the while she resisted the urge to reach across the counter and strangle him.

"I want a staff. A powerful one," her customer blathered "The kind that the obsidian witch used against the dread empress,"

He was a little well dressed for where he was and seemed to have a sense of entitlement to match. The twisting arcane mark that everyone was born with and that marked how magically powerful they were, only proceeded a short distance down from his right eye where it was always placed. His 'line' showed he was pretty average in terms of magical potency. However, it seemed he had some rather bad ideas about what wands and staffs were.

With a pained sigh, she set down her quill. "It was the undying empress, not the dread empress, please get that right. Also, that's not how magical focuses work. It's not powerful, the user is. There is no baked-in magic, without mana to draw the spell then a wand or staff is just a stick. The mana comes from you. They're just tools. Ideally, each focus should suit its user. A focus that doesn't suit you is one you'll damage by attempting to cast with it. A staff won't suit your needs any better than a wand would. In fact, putting full channels on a staff would make it much harder for you to use,"

Elise was short and wore a workers apron that was covered in dozens of useful pockets. Beneath her apron was a simple tunic and a set of worn trousers. Her short black hair was untidy and unkempt. Several fingers were missing from her hands, one on her left hand, two on her right. The fingers that remained had been badly scarred by burns. The scars continued down her hands and her arms growing less severe as the distance from her fingertips increased. Her rolled-up sleeves displayed the severity of the scars unashamed. Her face hadn't been spared being similarly marred. Two gruesome burn scars covered a significant portion of her face, each one centred around one of her eyes as the epicentre. And each one more severe the closer it got to her eye. Her line was a tiny insignificant nub, the smallest line of anyone she had ever seen, it was barely visible beneath her right eye. A sign to many that she was weak, feeble and worthless. Dealing with those mistaken attitudes tended to be frustrating. Though almost every aspect of dealing with her current customer was frustrating.

"No. It has to be a staff don't you understand! A wand's not as powerful!"

"That's not how this works. There needs to be space between channels or the spell threads moving through the different channels can interfere with each other. Which is why people with longer lines need focuses with more material since their spell thread is wider and needs more space. Just because all the powerful folk use longer and bigger focuses doesn't mean a bigger focus will help you be more powerful. In fact, using an unnecessarily big focus will slow your casting speed right down. Which if I recall was your main complaint with your current focus when we first started this consultation. If you are absolutely and insanely set on a staff I can channel only the end of the staff and leave the rest as deadwood. It'll function as a wand but look like it's a proper staff,"

"You're not listening to me! You're not selling me some junk wand that looks like a staff. I want a proper staff! Look I've come all the way down to this crappy slum shop because someone said you made good staves. You should be glad someone like me even came down here!"

Well, that was it. She'd was done. Her patience had run out. She had far better things to be doing. In fact, she had a solid backlog of orders she'd much rather be working on. In slow deliberate motions, Elise recapped the ink well to stop its contents from evaporating and began tiding away the papers. There was no way she was making him something now. She had far better things to be doing than bothering with this moron.

"Hey what are you doing!" he snapped.

"Paper and ink are expensive and I am not going to waste any more of it on you,"

He slammed his hands on the counter, rattling the displays.

"Hey!" he snarled "You short lined shit! Don't you know how things work! I asked for something you give it to me and then maybe just maybe treat the person who could flatten you in a magic fight with a little more respect!"

"Are you threatening me? Because if you are that is hilarious! I've had a good look at the staff you brought with you and if you want to use it to cast a spell at me then I'll make myself some tea, maybe run some errands and be back long before you're finished casting. This isn't the staff's fault of course, when you got it it was a perfectly good staff. But due to misuse by you, its channels have all been damaged. Because its a staff its spooling reservoir is far bigger than you can easily fill and that needs to be filled every time you cast a spell. So it takes you forever to cast anything. It's necessary to have a big spooling reservoir when casting big powerful spells but let's not kid ourselves here; you're not that powerful. You've even managed to do severe damage to the gates despite how simplistic the internal net of channels is!"

"I will not-"

"I do not know how you managed that. Gates are those intersections in the channels shaped so spell thread can only pass down one channel at a time - which allows users multiple options when using their focus, rather than having their channels set up in one pattern for one very narrow type of spell. Just in case you somehow didn't know what gates are, which looking at the state of your staff looks surprisingly likely. Since the gates in the staff were built for more powerful spell thread yours was able to slip through and down channels it wasn't meant to. What I can't understand is how you couldn't feel that happening. How could you feel something like that in your spell thread and then decide 'whelp nothing wrong here let's keep cast'in mah spells'. Because of that the gates are burnt out and are now completely useless. With the gates gone there's next to no control over what paths your spell thread goes down meaning you have little influence over what patterns your spell thread forms and thus very little control of what spell effect gets expressed by that pattern. That whole chunk of wood is a miscast waiting to happen. You're here making threats like you're a danger to anyone but yourself while I'm wondering how the hell you haven't yet turned your focus into an explosion of splinters. If you wish to make threats bring a rock next time, it'd be far more intimidating a prospect than you wielding magic."

". . ."

He sat there in silence glaring at her for a few moments.

"I'm waiting. Are you going to start casting your spell yet?" Elise mockingly asked, "Or are you going to leave?"

He stared at her fuming and furious.

"Screw you, you jumped up slum scum. I was told you could help me out and instead you give me nothing but disrespect and insults. Well forget it, I will find someone who isn't worthless,"

"Ah yes, my fellow focus makers do like sending people they don't like to deal with my way. I assume it was one of them that sent you down here in the first place. You see the thing about us focus makers you have to consider is that we need to keep up our reputation as capable focus makers and none of us are going to put our maker's mark on a staff you are going to abuse and break in under a week. So I wish you luck but I suspect you'll be directed back to this shop again by other shops that don't want to serve you,"

Still angry, still clearly furious, the customer picked up his things and headed for the door. He paused at the threshold, too egotistical perhaps to let Elise have the last word even if he didn't have anything meaningful to say.

"Remember my name," he hissed through gritted teeth before storming out into the street.

Elise sighed softly to herself. Well, it seems she had made yet another enemy and like some many of her enemies before him he was inconsequential. Many people who had shorter than normal lines showed deference to those with more magic than them. Elise, on the other hand, had found most people of mediocre power to be full of bluster, hot air, bluffs and threats that never materialised. In general, they weren't confident of their abilities but often felt they could push around those weaker than them by virtue of being loud enough. It usually only took someone more confident than them to call them out before they were backing down.

After being confined to her stool at the counter for an unreasonably long time trying to explain things to that last customer she felt stiff. She stretched and that simple act had her muscles and old wounds screaming their painful protests. Rummaging around under the counter she pulled out her flask of alcohol, her pouch of stoneleaf, her pipe and an unwieldy device with a reservoir of oil that was used for ignition. Most other folks would use their magic for a source of ignition, but Elise didn't have much supply of that and wouldn't waste what little magic she had on such trivialities. Instead, she had had to get inventive. She turned the wheel of the mechanism on her ignition device and sparks were showered on to an oil-soaked wick. But it wouldn't ignite. Even after several shakes and a little 'percussive maintenance' it still refused to light. It looked like she wouldn't be smoking any stoneleaf.

She had three main vices, stoneleaf for the pain, alcohol for the memories and focus crafting for the mind. Oh, how blissful her work could be, the joy of finishing difficult puzzles, the satisfaction of completing something perfect and the relief it offered to be able to focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else. But there were limits to how much she could do, her work required magic and there was only so much magic she could use safely. To her, it was a precious resource.

She hopped down from her stool and limped to her workbench. Magic was such a precious resource for her and she wanted to spend all of it making things. Taking up her tools she set to work.