@callahanorro
For the most part, the magaesterium in Glasswater had been abuzz with people bringing in cots and making plans for the magi to stay and hunker down during the day of the eclipse. Longer, if their magic was affected afterward. But Willamina Moreau had no magic herself, so she’d spent the day passing out bed rolls and making preparations of her own. She’d lived through a few partial eclipses so far, but from what the magi had said, this one, as strange and unnatural as it seemed, only happened every five hundred years. So she had done some errands and sold some of her time researching for some of the other priestesses so that she could buy a good bottle of wine, not the cheap stuff she usually drank.
And she planned on spending the eclipse where no other magi with any magic would dare to go during it. The top of the mage tower, where the protections of the wards were weakest, and the drain of the eclipse was the strongest. Granted, Glasswater’s magaesterium wasn’t the tallest in the realm, but she had offered to record the event using the instruments they had available, solar mapping tools, sun gazers, telescopes. She was the perfect candidate to stay in the astronomy tower simply because she was one of the few priestesses there without any gifts.
She had climbed the long, winding spiral staircase to the tower and spread blankets and pillows around the floor. She’d cranked the lever to open the oculus of the tower, angling the telescope upward, when she heard footsteps behind her. “I didn’t know if you’d show up or not.” She answered with a smirk, pointing up to the glass roof above them. “It’s beginning.”
