Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-Adventurers — Fugitive fire mage who graduated to pyromancy from arson
"Do you know the difference between pyromancy and arson?" says the man in the darkest corner of the tavern, teeth gleaming in the dimness, running a finger round the rim of the traditional crystal tumbler containing one of the terrible little traditional Bervignian hot brandy-and-butter drinks.
Arlen runs his cloth round a tabletop and grunts. It doesn't do to encourage the adventuring types; not that any of them need it.
The man cheerily downs his latest drink, precisely lining up the empty tumbler with the others on his table. If he keeps going, Arlen had better take all the stupid novelty cups out to the kitchen and get them washed; if you start serving tiny traditional novelty drinks in standard glassware, people figure out how little they're paying so much for.
"Principally the relative political fortunes of one's paymasters and targets."
"That why your feet have met the road, friend?" Arlen says, against his better judgement.
"Oh, no." The man's voice goes very soft, as if he's thinking of a lover. "No. When you stop caring about taking coin for it at all, that's when — well, people worry. Pyromania's an ugly word, for pitchfork-point, isn't it?"
Arlen looks at the man, with the faintest scent of char clinging to him, and considers the line of emptied high-proof cups in front of him.
"Ugly," he agrees, with the unflappably uninterested exterior of a man who's served drinks to many adventurers.