“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Next to a particularly weathered window, a young man with a low ponytail watched his friend try to slip a shiv through a crack. Here, outside a great four-storey mansion, two looked so out of place that they could be locked up for their ill-fitting clothes alone.

“Trust me, I’ve done this before. We’ll be out in 10 minutes,” Cyg replied with his usual intense expression, his messy hair looking as if someone wildly ran through it with a pair of scissors—probably because that’s exactly what happened.

“In broad daylight? Come on...” As he surveyed the lawn back and forth with a grumble, Griff was worried a guard might come their way—worse was the sparsely scattered trees doing little for cover. They had hurried past a guard just a while ago and now have only a rough estimate as to when the next would arrive. Using a long stretch of rope, a tangle of warped metal in the shape of conjoined hooks, and a tall tree, they had managed to scale the surrounding walls and sneak in.

“No, no, it’s precisely in broad daylight you ought to do this sort of thing. No one expects it and there’s barely anyone on watch. Most of them are out on forest patrol or keeping the swine safe.”

Cyg tried to assuage his friend’s fears as he finished unlocking the window. They climbed inside without a sound, and Griff was in awe seeing what decorated the interior. Massive paintings covered the walls, separated by the occasional door or stone bust of some historical figure. Their footsteps were dampened by the ornate rug that seemed to stretch on forever, its vibrant colors practically screaming how expensive the dyes were. Why, it hardly looked like a place that someone lived in.

Such were the expenses of the Baron Vressin, a man who had found himself a fortune by luck not once, but twice. The little town of Murkwell first boomed when it had found mythril deposits underneath, suffered when it turned out those veins were smaller than anyone expected, and boomed again when a new cross-continental trade route had made it the go-to rest stop for traders and travelers. Unfortunately for the town's citizens, the baron had little interest in doing more than just keeping the city barely alive, finding collecting rare jewels and art far more attractive.

To Cyg, thieving from a man of such excess was perfectly justified. Why should anyone’s loved ones starve when there was obscene wealth being wasted right here? No damn reason, the thief reasoned. So wordlessly while Griff followed, he counted the doors, sneaked down a seemingly nonsensical route, and stopped at a corner where a lone guard stood in the middle of the corridor, keeping watch at a set of double doors.

Griff asked, “What now? There’s no way I can get that guy from here. Unless you're going to do one of your tricks...”

In response, Cyg grinned, pulling a ring of metal bits out of his pocket. They were all crude things meant to open nothing, its only value in its weight and size. He concentrated, his eyes on a keychain hanging on the guard’s belt. Three seconds of great focus later, the keys in the guard’s possession then appeared in Cyg’s hand, having swapped places with the fakes—such was his first and only Aspect, almost as if the world meant for him to be a scoundrel all along. His next trick involved a lit match, and it took no less than fifteen seconds before the poor man noticed something was wrong and had to leave in a panic to extinguish himself.

Now free of obstacles, Cyg tested the keys one by one, finding success on the third and entering the room before anyone returned. Inside, four glass cases filled with different, dazzling gems were laid out. Griff, having never seen such things before in his life, leaned in close to see their finer details. They were all labelled, each unique for whatever reason given on the strips of paper next to them.

Cyg, picking the lock to one of the cases, suggested, “Well, we got the two of us and double the pockets. Why don’t we get started?”

And so they grabbed the shiniest jewels they could find, choosing what they roughly guessed to have the highest value to size ratio. They didn’t physically take much, but it was no doubt a fortune nonetheless.

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Griff asked, “You said there were more rooms like this?”

“More than you can believe. I’m sure the swine would barely care when he finds out what happened here.” Having checked all three cases closest to the entrance, Cyg then moved on to the last one, a small raised platform that housed only a single tiny red rock. “Judging by the decor, this is probably worth everything we just took combined.” He knelt to pick the lock when Griff approached him.

“Maybe we should get out of here already; I think we've got enough. I think I hear another guard posted right outside.”

In a huff, he said, “Just a second—” And Griff reflexively pulled him back as the case swung open. A puff of grey blasted into the air, hitting his friend squarely in the face and Cyg soon after. They both backed off, coughing, wiping their eyes and noses as they felt something sting their lungs. “Oh fuck, let’s go," Cyg sputtered out.

He scrambled to the door, thankful to not find it locked after triggering the trap. The new guard was taken completely by surprise, and a swift punch to the face from Griff had that problem temporarily solved. By the time he regained his senses, the two were already gone. They ran through the empty halls toward the nearest window and out, bolted through the grass, and were only spotted halfway across. The rest of the guards were rallied and tried to encircle them, but the two had already climbed up the rope set beforehand, the heavy hook then taken down and tossed to the side for retrieval at another time.

Fifteen minutes later they realized something was dreadfully wrong. They should be out of breath after sprinting, yes, but even as they rested, they felt as if they could never get enough air. Their skin paled and their hands trembled, and it did not take a genius to come to the conclusion whatever it was that plagued them required an expert to cure.

“We have to go back to town,” Griff huffed, “The apothecary...!”

There was only a single apothecary in Murkwell, and he was in the baron’s pocket. In fact, his place was infamous for treating Vressin’s men with utmost priority, emergencies be damned.

“If we go there, we might as well be turning ourselves in,” Cyg replied, his mind racing, “There’s the witch, we can go to her. She cures people, right?”

“That forest is dangerous as hell, Cyg.” Griff leaned against a tree, clutching his chest. “What about the archmage?”

Shaking his head, he replied, “Does he even know healing? Plus, no one’s seen him for a year. Not even an option.” His tower was on the other side of Murkwell, closer than where the witch supposedly lived but still a wild gamble. “It’s either maybe death or certain death,” he replied, “I think I’m leaning toward maybe.”

Griff grunted. “Whatever you say.”

Using the soon-setting sun as their compass, they ventured north. As the rumors went, all they had to do was get close enough and the forest would guide them the rest of the way. The witch, much like the archmage, was an immortal, and after a lifetime or two of wandering everyone settles down sooner or later. In the process, they usually alert the locals to their presence to avoid surprise and conflict. They weren’t invulnerable, and the vast majority of them only make it to two or three centuries before they come across something or someone that gets the better of them. But still, the common wisdom goes: “If they lived that long, surely they’d know how to fix someone up,” and they placed their hopes on such as they hiked into the deep.

At first, the slightest stirring of a bush or chirping of a bird would set them on edge, the possibility of some terrible predator following them bringing great fear, but after half an hour, it all paled from the pain. Their joints felt like fire, their bodies were stricken with terrible chills, and their limbs grew heavy as they went. They continued their journey, what should have been an hour feeling like an entire day. The sky darkened, and at some point Griff could walk no longer, stumbling onto the ground.

The thief lifted his friend and slung an arm over his shoulder. “No, come on... We’re almost there...!”

Cyg instinctively knew if he fell over now, he would never wake up. He could feel Griff’s shallow breathing for a while until his sense of touch vanished. A little after that, Griff could no longer move his legs, and Cyg was forced to carry him on his back. At some point without warning, he felt himself passing through something, at first believing it merely a strong gust of wind instead of an invisible barrier. There, he finally saw light; lanterns hung from the side of trees, ones that could burn for months without service. They appeared in even intervals, drawing a line deep into the forest that Cyg followed until the trees let up into a small clearing—his destination. Invitingly, a two-storey house sat at the center, shining bright in the middle of the night as if waiting for them all along.

At the doorway, a figure stood, her cloak billowing in the light wind.

“Haven’t you come a long way?” the witch said, “Come on in.”