"Going slower might help, she says, to give them more time to get used to it and change the habits."

"That might work, yeah. If that means you can't do as many people though it's probably not worth it."

    "She's not going to leave until she's taken care of everyone; it will slow her down a little, but not very much."

"It'd probably help if it were slower. It might depend on the bluemage, some of them do a good days bad days thing when they're only about halfway gone? And those you could probably do fast."

    "Yes sir. I'll ask Tse Witwex about rearranging the priority list."

He nods.

Deskyl continues on the list, skipping bluemages altogether for now.

There's this one ultra-dwindled redmage who had some kind of problem back when he was the Queen's redmage.

Wow, yeah, yikes.

Yup. He mostly hangs out being hugged by a rotating cast of his children, attendant, and clients.

Well. Deskyl gets to work.

He starts improving almost immediately, in little ways.

This makes him less rather than more happy, at first. His attendant holds him tight and he stares into her face for clues, afraid to blink.

Deskyl makes a pained face and a quickly-aborted reaching gesture before signing to DZ, who signs back rather than translating; they seem to be having a bit of an argument about something.

(The redmage's attendant pets his hair and looks questioningly at them.)

DZ wins, fairly quickly.

    "She could show him what she's doing if she bonded with him, but it would be a terrible idea, ma'am."

- Iamica grabs a blanket and throws it over him, and whatever he sees in her face makes him shake harder under it.

    "She won't, ma'am. She wouldn't have done it without asking, and she wouldn't have asked if she couldn't protect him from being dwindled by it."

Iamica nods. Wiar gradually calms down.

"How much have you been told about what Xaari Deskyl has been doing?"

"She's undwindling him."

"Yes, ma'am," she nods, "I meant more generally than that. Deskyl is a different sort of mage, from a different world; her magic is much more flexible than the sort you get here, and she's been working on the problem of dwindling for several months now. No mage in this half of the Temple-Guild will be dwindled by using magic while she's here."

"He probably still shouldn't take any new clients," says Iamica.

Deskyl has gone back to meditating; DZ nods again. "I don't know very much about that, Ma'am, but even if it was safe in general I'm not sure it'd be safe with her - her magic affects her personality; I'm not sure how a redmage would react to that."

"I don't know either. But he's had too many and lost too many."

"Yes ma'am. She'll do what she can for him."

He continues improving, not quickly but steadily.