“Fine, fine, whatever. I won’t break the barrier around you, just the one blocking the entrance. Here, I’ll pay for the bags before I– Wait, how long do the guards usually respond?”
“Normally fifteen or twenty minutes at this time of night.” The man offers.
“Alright, let me just get out the bronze.” Shaula retrieves ten bronze from her bag of mostly silvers. Six for the bags, and four for the guy’s trouble. She places them on the counter, the portion in front of the barrier.
“Thanks for your patronage. You… really don’t have some guy’s organ in your bag or something? I wouldn’t think a mass murderer or a syndicate hit man would leave a tip.”
“I’m not a mass murderer, nor am I a shoplifter, but… Honestly, it would be too confusing and saddening for you to see what I’m holding in my arms.” Shaula smiles sheepishly while looking down at the covered head in her arms.
“What? Are you holding a unwanted child that you’re leaving on the doorsteps of an orphanage? Is it a dumpster baby you found? Oh, are you holding an abortion?” Any of those might explain the bits of blood the cashier smells. Shaula laughs a big “ha!” laugh at his words. The man’s deadpan face while he gave his macabre predictions was just way too comical.
“None of the above. No more questions, it’s time I leave.”
The man looks in interest at how she’s going to accomplish that. The human commoner family who owns this store paid extra for strong magical barrier protection. It wasn’t for him or the other cashiers but the family head loved handing over armed robbers, burglars and shoplifters to the guards. He would seek maximum punishment for anyone who dared to steal from one of his stores.
The few times the cashier himself activated the barriers, no one was able to hurt him, let alone escape the premises with their haul. What would this human attempt to try and get herself out of here? The man was rooting for her success, if for no other reason than to get some good entertainment tonight.
Shaula places her right hand on the barrier right in front of the store entrance. She has already slid the sliding open but now she must contend with the invisible wall. She tests it with a heat that makes her hand glow bright yellow. The cashier averts his eyes briefly.
He wasn’t expecting a mage, but he guesses the woman would have to be a mage to have any shot of breaking this barrier. Shaula presses her glowing hand closer to the wall. Nothing happens. It doesn’t melt or crack in any way. So, she increases the heat. Since the palm of her hand is faced away from the cashier, he watches as a light that get brighter and brighter is emitted from the human woman’s hand.
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Fire or light magic shouldn’t be effective against this barrier. It’s not a solid object that can just melt or burn, it’s a magical lattice work of air, the same principles don’t–
The barrier shatters, dissipating into nothing. Shaula waves her hand at the entrance to test out her success. The man watches in unrestrained surprise at how easily the human woman shattered the barrier. It took her no more than half a minute.
Yeah… Better not give anything away about who she might be. No need to bring that kind of trouble to my head.
The man shakes his head in exasperation. Even the barrier in front of him was shattered. The woman might have overloaded the artifact powering the thing. The owner of the store was not going to like that, though the cashier could probably lie and tell him that it malfunctioned.
As the cashier brainstorms about how he’s going to explain how an expensive security artifact was put out of commission, Shaula walks into an alleyway and places Ajax’s head into one of the four sacks she just bought. The sack itself is large enough to hold Ajax until his upper chest is restored.
By that point, she would ideally have completed her tasks for the night and returned to the slum buildings to await his resurrection.
Shaula heads out to her hotel with the problem of carrying her sleeping friend dealt with. Once she reaches the place, she walks past the front desk reception without a care. The man at the desk doesn’t stop her as he has seen her before. He does raise an eyebrow at some of the charred parts of her dress, but doesn’t say a word.
I like this place. Everyone’s so professional.
Shaula enters her room. She first changes out of her clothes and takes a quick shower to get any traces of blood, dirt and whatever else off of her body. Today was a long and draining day. As she is about to finish, she hops out of the running shower for a moment, takes Ajax out of his sack and takes him into the shower with her.
“Ha… I wonder what you’d think about this, Ajax… Taking a shower with me, getting me to wash the blood off you, clean your hair…”
Shaula smiles as she cleans Ajax’s head thoroughly. He’s regenerated half a centimeter more since she last checked him. She feels refreshed knowing that, when he wakes up, he won’t be stained with his own blood at least. He’ll be both clean and whole then.
After stepping out of the shower, she dries herself and Ajax off, placing him into one of the clean sacks. She then changes into new clothes instead of her more burnt ones. She’s going to need to go shopping after Ajax wakes up. She puts a cloth hat on instead of a scarf or coif to cover her short hair this time.
Shaula then grabs as much money as she can from her supply. She places about 500 silver coins into a purse that she can hold in her hands while the bag with Ajax is hanging off her shoulder. This is about $60,000 worth of money back on Earth, by her estimate. It weighs over thirty pounds but it’s nothing to her.
Shaula doesn’t know what bail costs for what the two orphans did, but that’s something she can ask later tonight. Hopefully she won’t have to make a trip back to the room. She steps out of her hotel room with Ajax and heads towards her first spot of the night, the Astrid local bar. She has to pay back Dzan after all.