It had been a long time since Lila had been flung out of a window, especially one so far off the ground. Honestly, she wasn’t really a fan of the experience. It was a shame too, her job was supposed to be an easy one today. It seemed like such a bargain when some random guy offered this job as recompence for losing a bet, why did it turn out this way? What was her job again today?
“Ah…right…it was to knock off some old kook, forge some documents, then be on her way….at least I thiiiink that’s what the contract said” she muttered to herself as she was frying up some cheap meat for breakfast.
After enjoying the best meal she had in a while, she got dressed in casual clothing, pulled her hair into a simple ponytail, packed a small bag of…inevitables, as she called them, then she rushed out of the house to complete her newest job. As she ran through the seaside city’s port, she saw all kinds of people and sights, as she did every morning.
“Good morning Mr. Kilo! Oh, I’m doing wonderfully Mrs. Herr…I Hope you have a good day!” She yelled as she was passing a group of people.
She loved some of the people in this town, they were so caught up in their own worlds that it seemed like the outer world didn’t even exist. After about half an hour of running, she arrived in front of a well-built manor, comprised of wonderfully shaped maple with marble foundations, a green yard with towering trees and trimmed hedges, all surrounded by what looked like a simple enchanted iron fence. Lila smirked to herself as she inspected it with arcane sight, her hazel eyes now glowing an azure blue.
“It’s probably just a basic shield or shock fence, these rich people really are all the same.” She chuckled to herself as she promptly jumped over the whole fence and into the yard, completely untouched by whatever doom might have claimed her if she had gone near the fence.
She approached the manor quietly, approached a window, and pulled out her lockpicking tools. It took her a few minutes, but she eventually got the window open, and she started to slip inside. She suddenly remembered to take off her muddy shoes, she didn’t want any possibility of this being traced back to her. After slipping the shoes into her bag, she slipped into the manor. As she padded walking down the hallways, Lila noticed trophies, beautifully crafted armor, and weapons decorating the hallways, and suddenly a worn, tired voice spoke in her mind;
Lila, that weapon seems interesting, keep track of it and her eyes were dragged by some force that wasn’t her own to a particularly fancy dagger, surrounded by black cloth. After inspecting its clearly warded pedestal, she shrugged as she started walking down the hallway again. She muttered to herself “Yeah, I’m sure it looks quite delectable to you, being all shiny-like”.
After noting its position, she sneaked around the manor, noting its lack of people, until she found the room that looked most like the office of the manor, where the target was supposed to be at this time of day. The door was locked. Because of course it was. “Why can’t it ever be easy…I hate using his magic…” she complained but countered herself with “but I do need to complete this…so I guess I have no choice.”
Lila started muttering an incantation while reaching out to her patron, throwing in a few curses here an there for good measure, and how she needed to use this spell. The process was over in an instant, and her form turned transparent as she held her form for another second, then she fell to the floor in a malleable blob. She quickly shivered, shaking off a little moisture that her new skin generated. Then she looked towards the door. She probed the door for any cracks or openings, then warbled happily when she located a tiny crack near the door’s handle. Faster than a gunshot, she slipped through the crack and popped into the room. The room was dark, and she didn’t sense any vibrations… but that would mean there wasn’t anyone in here…where was her target? Now that she thought about it, while she was walking around earlier, she didn’t see anyone in the entire manor, and she had walked around for the better part of an hour inspecting different things worth a bit of quick cash.
Curious, but with nothing to do, she began to sweep the office. While her gelatinous form ran over what felt like a desk, an opened letter caught her attention. She slid it aside for later and kept searching. She found a few nice items and quite a few expensive paperweights but nothing that mattered. But something about that note seemed off earlier. She couldn’t read it while under the effects of her spell, so she decided to take it with her. She bounced over to where she sensed the letter, put it inside her body for convenience, then slid to the door, hardening some of her body to grip the doorknob and disable any security enchantments it might have had.
After she went outside, she roamed around the manor, waiting for her form to return to normal, and she returned to the weapon case that her patron had mentioned. Curious about what could interest something like him, she inspected the case for magical traps, and was pleasantly surprised when she found pulsing runes lining the glass casing. This was one of the upsides to this form, it enhanced her senses and allowed her to meddle with a bit of magic. She had mastered the art of moving magic runes a few years back when she got caught trying to steal from a city lord and had to escape from his prison. Lila warbled happily as she remembered the good times she had on her first adventures. Now she just gets paid to steal from old people. Her luck would change sometime hopefully, but she could focus on this later, she had a job to figure out. A slimy appendage reached up from her mass and made a bubble around a rune, slowly sliding slime behind the rune, focusing on pulling it just a fraction of an inch off the surface and shaping her slime to feel like the texture of the wood and glass it was placed on. The rune started to glow as it was disturbed, but it calmed down as she quickly transferred it to her slime bubble, and then transferred it onto another display case, careful not to put it too close to any other runes. She repeated this process for a few more runes, only some of which she recognized, including vibration sensors, heat sensors, and impact sensors, but she didn’t recognize the other glyphs surrounding this box. That was a little worrying, because she had studied different runes and glyphs related to basic spellcraft and advanced protection. What was this item that would illicit such advanced wards?
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
After very carefully removing the advanced protections over the course of a few minutes, she felt her patron’s magic starting to slip away, and she started to become more solid. After waiting to see she was truly back to being herself, she finally breathed once more. A sigh of relief escaped her tired lungs
“Gosh, not being able to see or talk is an odd feeling, though the increased vibration and magic sense is appreciated.”
She ran her fingers along the letter that she had been carrying with her while in her slime form, now being able to sense that it was tinged with a strange magic, magic that felt like it wasn't from anywhere near here. She folded it and tucked it into her boot, for safekeeping. Next, she turned her attention to the weapon that her patron had taken interest in, even in a hallway filled with magical artifacts and trophies. Without any preamble, she took out a small knife from her belt, flipped it in the air, then caught and slammed the hilt into the glass in a very practiced move. The glass spiderwebbed but didn’t fully shatter. Must have been some other precaution? She paused, feeling off. Closing her eyes and tuning in to her hearing, she heard a soft, pure peal of noise, like someone had hit a crystal. But no one had hit a crystal around… oh shoot. She had to get out of here.
Crystals resonated with a magical frequency that activated most runes in the area. She might have just triggered every trap in the entire hallway.
Knowing that she didn’t have much time, she abandoned all thought of stealth and smashed the crystal pane over and over, not willing to give up on the weapon her patron was interested in. Finally, a small hole started to form, and she desperately started hitting faster, knowing she had only a few moments until the runes caught the signal from the whining crystal. She finally was able to fit a hand though, and she grabbed the ornate dagger, quickly retracting her hand, and began racing down the hall like a devil out of hell. She barely threw herself around the corner, knowing she was still in potential range, but she would be in worse shape if she wasn’t taking cover.
Time slowed to a crawl, and the manor seemed eerily silent. The moment passed, and a million things happened at once. A mind splitting screech rang throughout the town, shattering all the windows and fragile pottery, a blinding light turned the world white, flashing with the light of the sun, hundreds of multicolored beams carving through wood and stone like parchment, spectral shapes from other planes flashing into reality only to be torn apart seconds later by the nebula of wild magic that dwarfed over the town. Lila held her hurting head in her hands and tried to avoid as many dangerous magic effects as she could, jumping over blinding patches of light that oozed over the floor, avoiding bits of fire and exploding wood, hiding from shrapnel blasts when the weapon’s pedestals exploded, jumping away from bits of reality that turned black as night, jumping around walls of fire and ice that appeared before her, and she thought that she might have a chance at surviving this. At that moment, she stumbled and felt herself being dragged back into the room.
Looking back over her shoulder, back where all of the runes had first reacted, she saw something that looked like a glowing sun, about a foot in diameter, pulsating in an entrancing tempo. Whenever it pulsed, it looked like it drew in all the magic, light, shadow, and matter that it could pull into it.
She didn’t know what it was, but it looked bad. She started running towards one of the many holes in the walls, but just as her hand reached the outside, a terrible crash shook the city, and the sky shook with the force of the blast. The air started tearing as gravity started wavering, and Lila screamed as she felt herself being torn from the inside out and in every direction at once. She quickly sent a panicked prayer to her Benefactor, hoping that he could save her from this. Lila screamed as she felt herself get thrown into the air, then bounce off something hard, her head ringing like a bell, and her senses faded to black.