James’s brow creased, his mind full of stress. He needed one last thing for his prototype to function. The scale of a stone wyvern. Unfortunately wyvern scales were rather expensive. At least, to the amount of money he managed to scrounge up. So, against his better judgement, he was going to steal one. Or five. It’s not exactly like they count them all in that basket filled with them. At least, that is what James told himself. 

And finally, after a week and a half of planning, it was finally the day he would steal from Mondols Magical Supplies Shop. It was a mouthful, James thought, but it had a sort of ring to it.

Now, Mondols was not the shop you and your family visited on the weekend to pick up your magic groceries. It was the sketchy one on the other side of town. It was the one you avoided unless you were part of the “neighbourhood” so to speak. To be blunt, it was the magic shop of the slums. It wasn't as bad as it seemed, it still had plenty of customers which means that the merchandise at least was legitimate and not a total scam. When James went on his first reconnaissance mission, he noticed a small sign posted on the front door below the paper showing the shop's hours.

“Quality NOT assured, buy at your own risk. No refunds.” the sign read. James grinned internally at that. It was a funny joke. Thinking about it more, James grinned even wider. If it wasn't a joke, it was even funnier. He could just imagine a potion or spell scroll blowing up in somebody's face, then marching back to the shop to demand a refund, or even better, trying to get old man Mondol arrested because of it, and old man Mondol would just walk out, and point at his door.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Oh, just in case you didn't know, the magical laws were completely separate grey-folk(the wizard name for normal people) laws. While the two worlds coexisted, and even combined in some places, ultimately whichever government you “belonged” to would have the final say. This might seem a little unfair, but the laws were all generally the same, it was just the judgement given to the criminal was really a change. Imprisoning a wizard who lives hundreds of years is different from imprisoning grey-folk who live a hundred without outside aid. And you can’t exactly give a life sentence to an immortal being.

This is related because if you got scammed in the magic community, it is mostly your fault. Due to their longevity, the magical community did not change very much over time, and in ancient times, if you got scammed, you either beat up the scammer, or the scammer beat you up. In the present time, they had laws about this though, you couldn't just go around beating up people. But if the other party wronged you first, it was commonplace. The Ruling Council stopped things from escalating too much, and collateral damage was frowned upon greatly.

James stopped contemplating the intricacies of magical government. He was going to go rob a store.