"The upper nobility's banquet" and "the lower-class poor's banquet" would need roughly two or three hundred extras.
That many people meant chaos, and mages always had ideas of their own. There was no telling when one would decide to stand out. While editing the footage, Annan had already spotted several secretly casting charm or light spells in the crowd to draw attention to themselves.
So Annan hired Actors from the theater to train the extras, then left the city with Michael to meet the Illusionist he had invited.
Tina Lai Wright. Formerly known as Bana Sweeney, Lynn Owen, Maven Pankhurst, and more... The frequency of her name changes said plenty about how troublesome she was.
Michael said that when he was still an apprentice at a mage shop in Bountiful City, he had spent some time with Tina Lai Wright, who was also an apprentice. Their lives had then taken completely different paths—Michael's perseverance and talent had led his teacher to take him to Breeze City, where he joined the Mage Tower. But Tina Lai Wright, who was even more talented, had been thrown out for swindling people.
After that, she had wandered Plangraced County for more than a decade. Rumor had it she had become a mage and earned herself a long list of bad reputations. She had rarely tried to swindle Michael, though, so the two got along well enough.
She clearly wasn't someone to trust, but Michael said manipulating illusions was her specialty. Annan saw that for himself as soon as they met.
The pale-cheeked woman had patterns painted on her face, purple quartz powder on her lips, and jangling ornaments and feathers all over her. She looked more like a witch than a practitioner of dark magic, and when she saw Annan, she conjured an illusion