[October Prompt] No Mead

2. Good! People are drinking too much anyway.

A towering monster had overcome an entire city for weeks, and people were complaining that they couldn't drop into the local taverns for mead!?

Arianwyn couldn't believe the sheer disregard. In the camps around the town of Mead, where Order mages had clung to hope and sanity as they tried to find a way to banish the corrupt magic that had put an entire festival to sleep, she heard the complaint leveled often. With the capital of, well, mead, under fire, there was no mead to go around. Arianwyn could only turn her nose up at the complaint, absolutely shocked by the audacity.

There was an emergency. There was the potential for a life-or-death situation. Who knew what was happening to those trapped under the spells of the Miasma? Who knew what would happen if it continued to spread across Ivras? What if it reached Namarast? Could they even stop it? Would anyone be safe?

While the Order reckoned with a problem so great, some mages still had the nerve to complain that they couldn't get tipsy. That they couldn't dull their senses during an absolute emergency. That they were stuck actually doing their jobs, and not taking the evenings off to go get drunk in a local tavern.

Arianwyn could do little more than glare daggers at such lazy, disloyal mages, but she certainly did glare her frustrations at every complainer she heard. Fine. If they were so enthralled by the idea of an after-work drink that they were willing to neglect an emergency, they deserved to suffer without their mead. Maybe the absence of their beloved alcohol would remind them where their loyalties truly lie. Maybe people are drinking too much anyways. They had bigger things to focus on, and Arianwyn wasn't going to let the lack of a bar keep her from fighting back against the forces of corruption.