The women entered Erend through the east gate and headed directly towards the center of the city. Once they were there they went north and went down so alleys until they were outside of some shady-looking magic shop. They dismounted the steeds and walked on foot pulling them behind, a small home with a stable was at the very end of the alley.

"Put your horse here," instructed Wini. "We are going to go as close as we can to the castle on foot."

Doing as she was told, Ciylia tied her horse up, gave it too much food and water because she felt responsible for her horse almost getting killed by that walking jungle. Not only that but she got money back for returning the horse alive.

The trio of thieves walked together through the main street until they entered the noble's district. Inside the fancy district, the women kept to the shadows and avoided any people they could.

Sliding up to the house they deemed the safest distance away, Ciylia peeked inside the window while she waited to hear the Succubi's plan. Inside this random noble was a young woman but she slowly turned into some weird metallic-looking slim monster. At that moment, Ciylia ducked down. Whatever freaky things these nobles were into, was none of Ciylia's concern.

When Ciylia looked back towards the two wizards, they were sharing a romantic embrace. Lynn winked when she noticed Ciylia was watching them, which made the forest elf's tanned skin go pink. The almost mute woman then squeezed her partner's ass before releasing her kiss.

"Oh my," said Wini almost out of breath. "I forgot you were here. We were just doing our good luck ritual before a heist."

"That looked like a little more than a ritual," blushed Ciylia.

"No need to be shy," teased Wini. "A lot of women in our guild are lesbians. It's one of the reasons we are called succubi. Jealous men who can never get us."

"If you say so." The elven thief knew that some people had weird habits before or after a big job. She once knew a person who was some troll descendant named Orglorgargensmore, a family name she was told, who would chop his arm off after a job claiming that he was cutting away the evidence of the job. Luckily, the weirdo could regrow his limbs.

"So what's the plan?" Ciylia was ready to get back to business instead of watching two women pleasuring themselves.

"Well," Wini tapped her chin in thought. "Lynn is going to turn you invisible and the rest is up to you. Any valuables you decide to keep are yours but we want that list, Once we have it, you are free to go."

"I don't enjoy being told I'm a prisoner," spat Ciylia.

"You aren't," glared Wini. "You are just paying off a debt."

The white-haired wizard cocked her head and Lynn approached Ciylia. She ripped out a few of her eyelashes and stuck them to some gummy substance on her index finger and thumb. The doll-like wizard silently muttered something as she expanded and stretched the substance between her fingers. After a few tries, the gummy hair-filled material snapped and Ciylia became invisible.

At first, it was surreal, Ciylia couldn’t see anything she was doing.

“Are you able to cast this again? I think I need some time to adjust to not seeing myself or what I’m doing.”

“I should warn you,” added Wini. “This spell is not really for assassinations or combat.”

“Why not? I’m invisible,” protested Ciylia.

“When you attempt to do harm to another creature or person, the spell will break,” stated Wini. The painted eye on her forehead looked like it twitched.

“How does a stupid spell know that?”

“I’m not too sure, to be honest,” admitted the white-haired wizard thief. “What we do know about the spell was it was created by a wizard who was a pacifist and a fantastic thief. He never drew a dagger once in his whole career.”

“How annoying. Didn’t any wizard after the spell was created try to change it?”

“Yes,” Wini was looking annoyed by these questions and placed her back against Lynn’s chest. She then grabbed Lynn’s hands and put them on her breasts. The doll-like wizard seemed more than happy to help her lover. “But the duration of time is much shorter. If I recall it only lasts a minute or two but the original version can last about an hour.”

Finally finished with her questions, Ciylia began practicing her lock picking as that is what she’d probably need while in the castle.

She made her way down the main streets to see how good Lynn’s magic really was. Only once did she accidentally step on some dry leaves because she couldn’t see where she was placing her foot. Being invisible sounded easy but did take some getting used to.

Ciylia then went from house to house picking the locks on the doors so she could get acquainted with using her tools as they were also invisible. This made lock picking a challenge but one she was glad to accept. The forest elf hoped to be famous one day, though maybe notorious would be a better word. Even if she had to do that by becoming the world’s greatest thief.

She kept practicing her art until she dropped one of her picks. It dropped to the ground and suddenly became visible. Ciylia checked herself and saw that she was still invisible. Picking up the tool, it didn’t turn invisible which made her mission even more problematic. She realized that she’d have to carry a piece of paper across a castle without it being obvious that the paper was flying on its own.

Ciylia returned to the location where the two wizard thieves were.

“Here.” Lynn pointed at the invisible thief. Ciylia looked down at herself to confirm she was still see-through.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The spooky wizard then snapped her fingers and Ciylia became visible again.

“I’m sure you’ve had enough time to play around,” scowled Wini. “It’s time for you to do the job you were brought here to do.”

No one had even told Ciylia where the room was located so she was forced to try and recall the map Gene had shown everyone before the ball. If she had to guess, it would probably be a room that Gene marked with a red X since no one was allowed there. From what she knew about Candice, she was a secretive woman so she would have asked for a guard or two at her door. Since she also liked to manipulate powerful men it would have been a room close to the king's tower. From some research Gene had done, the only rooms in the king's tower were for the king himself and his son, Gerald. Logic would then dictate that one of the two rooms that were by the ballroom's balcony area had to be the one she stayed in. Damn, Ciylia wished she actually studied the map like she was instructed to do, hindsight was always 20/20. She would just have to check both rooms then since she couldn't remember which one had the red X on it. In fact, probably the only people who could remember were Gene and Kira, maybe Meowlynn as the former two just had naturally great memories and Meowlynn was just really smart, though Ciylia doubted that a map would have interested the wizard.

"Yeah, I think I can get this done," said Ciylia nonchalantly.

"Good," hissed Lynn as she started casting her invisibility spell. The weird witch touched Ciylia's shoulder to finish casting the spell, then kissed the forest elf's cheek and licked her ear, being sure to give it a playful nibble at the end.

Ciylia dashed away until she was close to the main entrance of the castle and started to tread lightly. She made sure to stay on as much stone as she could so her footprints wouldn't give her away. At the gate, there were two men posted with barely enough space to sneak by, so she decided that she needed to distract a guard, just for a moment, to allow her to squeeze past.

Looking around she found a rock and was about to through the rock at a wall nearby when the creepy and haunting voice of Lynn entered her mind. "Don't attack."

The scariest thing about the woman sending a message directly into her mind was that she said two words, instead of one or none. Secondly, was that they were watching her somehow, but they gave her a nice reminder. It had slipped her mind that if she struck something that the invisibility would break.

She was then forced to come up with a different solution. Instead of throwing the rock at the wall, she decided to throw it up into the air and let it hit the ground that way. Then when the guards even peeked out it investigate, she would slide in undetected. Mustering up all her strength, the thief tossed the rock as high as she could to give herself enough time to get into a position where she could bypass the guards.

A loud clamoring of stone on stone broke the night's silence, alerting the guards to an unknown presence. They moved away from the gate temporarily, allowing Ciylia to slip in effortlessly. "Probably just some snot-nosed kid," she heard one of the guards say.

The main door was ajar so she was able to squeeze through the gap without moving the door, one of the few times she was thankful her breasts weren't as ridiculous as Meowlynn's or Kira's. Quietly, she climbed the marble staircase to the second floor, trying to stay off the carpet the resided in the middle of the stairs. The red carpet would only try to pull things off the bottom of her boots and leave a slight indent, both things revealing an intruder. The elf was wise enough to know that servants never touched the carpet unless it was to cross to the other side and even those places showed wear like road intersections.

Continuing further, she reached the first door that Candice's room could have been. The elf tried the door and it was unlocked, so far it was easy. Inside the room was dark but elves could navigate darkness with ease so she wasn't concerned. The room was spotless and looked freshly cleaned, still, the elf was going to make sure this wasn't the correct room before leaving. She examined the desk for any envelope, then checked the closest, under the mattress, and the truck at the end of the bed. Satisfied this wasn't the room she was looking for, she went to leave.

A swishing sound was next to the door so Ciylia peered through the keyhole. A maid was cleaning the hallway right in front of her. Normally, the wise decision would be to wait until the woman left but there was a limited amount of time on the spell that made her invisible.

The thief went and opened the window, tied some sheets together, and tied them to the bed. Next, the woman grabbed the chair in the room and knocked it over. Her plan was to make it seem like someone else escaped from here and use that confusion to complete her mission.

The maid opened the door and Ciylia slipped out quickly and went right to the door on the opposite side of the stairwell that led to the king’s room. She started picking the lock as fast as she could as the maid ran out calling for help. Tumbled clicked into place right before the guards arrived and Ciylia deafly entered the desired room.

There were many outfits of various colours and a portrait of Shield with Candice, identical to the one she saw in Shield’s black tower. There on the desk was an envelope that was sealed by a wax purple shield.

Ciylia scooped it up and stared at it. The wizards didn’t say anything about her not looking at the list so she thought she would steal a glance.

The thief tried to break the seal with her hands but what looked like a wax seal seems impossibly hard. She wanted to cut it open with her dagger but was afraid that would count as a violent act and didn’t want the invisibility spell to break.

Loud voices could be heard outside. Silently opening the window, she looked out the window and saw a small group of guards trying to investigate Ciylia’s fake intruder. The thief opened the door recklessly and made a dash out of the castle.

The maid was startled and alarmed by the sudden opening of the door. Ciylia didn’t care, the only thing on her mind was to get out as fast as she could. Throwing caution to the wind, she ran as quickly as she could out the front door. She continued past the two guards, bumping into them but didn’t stop or anything.

Minutes later, the spell wore off, leaving Ciylia visible. With the magic gone, the thief decided to sneak into a secluded spot and cut open the wax seal.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," warned Wini who came out from behind a house near Ciylia. Lynn came from the other side of the house from behind the forest elf and snatched the envelope from her hands and placed it on the ground. She started took out two essence sticks and Wini lit them on fire. The ghostly wizard then started doing an odd almost ceremonial dance and the purple wax shield started to glow before a small puff of snow puffed out of it.

Wini then grabbed the envelope and cit the seal off. "See here," the white curly-haired woman showed Cilyia the back of the seal. Some sort of glyph was present, carefully etched into the wax. "If you would have destroyed the wax in any way, an explosion of ice would have pierced through you and the list. Luckily for us, that didn't happen."

"Complete," Lynn kissed the back of Ciylia's neck.

"Yes," nodded Wini, her weird painted third eye seemed to stare directly at Ciylia. "You have paid your debt and are free to go."

The two Wizard Thieves shared a kiss and then left the forest elf standing there alone. Shrugging to herself, Ciylia went to the Leaky Tap for a night's rest.

The next day, Ciylia left early in the morning and headed towards the Ardent River. Her trip was uneventful until she got to the point where a human wearing a white coat was watching a bunch of horses that Ciylia recognized as her party's.

"Where is everyone?"

"Oh, hello," waved the woman. "I'm Elizabeth Tally, and I'm watching these horses for the Jellybeans."

"Well you can go," said Ciylia. "I'm a member of that group and I can watch them now."

"Thanks." beamed Elizabeth as she skipped away leaving Ciylia feeling confused. Gene would have to explain that woman to her later. For now, the least Ciylia could do for abandoning her party is watch their rides and make sure they are protected, watered, and fed.