Emmaline leaned back on her pile of cushions and popped a cherry between her lips stripping the flesh of the fruit with practiced ease before spitting the seed out. She rather negligently waved her hand and, rather than falling to the floor, the pit began to orbit one of the hanging lanterns like a small moon. Cherry pits could be processed to create arsenic she recalled from what little instruction her master had bothered to impart to her.

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” she admitted. Like most wizards of her college, she believed, in her heart of hearts, that gold was a goal within itself.

“I suppose I could buy myself a mansion in Altdorf,” she mused, imagining a grand house among the nobles and rich merchants, something that would show all those who had looked down at her that she was a great lady now and worthy of envy. Perhaps she could build a proper laboratory and library to make herself a respectable wizard as well.

“Maybe I could hire mercenaries to dispossess a few Emirs,” she giggled, looking around at the opulence that surrounded her. 

“Or travel to see strange and exotic places,” she mused, thinking of the distant and legendary kingdoms of Ind and Cathy in the far east, places that were only rumors and outlandish stories in the Empire.

“If there is enough gold I suppose I could do all three,” she grinned, spitting out a second seed and setting it to orbiting alongside the first before taking another mouthful of wine to wash the dark red juice from her mouth.

“What about you?”