Spreen had said that it would be a few days before anyone would show up. It had been about a week and a half now and I was starting to lose my mind. The patrols had been largely uneventful and the cats hadn't been much for conversation, especially since I was aware of everything that went on inside the warehouse.

Aside from the odd passerby, this whole area was more or less abandoned.

I couldn't really get Carmen and Midnight to gather materials either. Their current telekinesis had fine control, but the weight limit seemed to be about five to ten pounds. Not to mention that sending either one out made me feel like I was wearing a hospital gown on a particularly breezy day.

The clock had proven very useful. I now had several new blueprints for gears and springs as well as copper and tin in my crafting materials. However with only a few units of each material provided from the clock, there wasn't much I could do with it.

My [Lucky Cat] had remained under the radar, but the trio had mostly been arguing about how they were going to interact with me. Duke seemed like he had a personal vendetta against me for some reason that I was probably going to have to address eventually.

There was only so many arguments I could listen to, so I left them alone for the most part.

But here I was, stuck waiting with nothing to do. Again.

“Kill any good mice lately?” I asked Tom, who was curled up around my core.

Tom popped an eye open and glanced at my core with an annoyed look.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m just bored,” I sighed.

Tom nuzzled his head against me and went back to snoozing.

Tom had taken it upon himself to be the guardian of my core and had hardly left my side since he had recovered from that first night.

“Too bad I can’t actually pet you,” I thought to myself and continued to wait for something, anything to happen.

As I sat twiddling my proverbial thumbs, I got the feeling that one of my patrolling [Stray Cats] had found something. Not something dangerous, but certainly something out of the ordinary.

“What do we have here?” I thought excitedly as I took the cat’s point of view.

Immediately I realized what my cat was talking about. There in the middle of the road, pointy hat and all, was an honest-to-God wizard grumbling at a pair of dowsing rods she was holding in her hands.

"Confound it, why isn't this blasted scrying spell working!" she hissed under her breath.

"Well that's definitely new," I thought as I watched the wizard meander back and forth.

My cat seemed to agree with me.

"Alma to Hilda, come in Hilda," came another voice from the same vicinity of the wizard.

"Alma, I know who has the other stone, you don't have to do that every time," said the wizard who was presumably Hilda.

"Um yes ma'am, I'll try to keep that in mind," said the disembodied voice of Alma.

"And don't be so formal, I'm not one of your professors," Hilda said.

"Yes, um, Hilda I'll try to keep that in mind as well," Alma said stiffly, "what's the status of the scrying? Over."

"Blasted things usually give me more of a straight answer- oh!" Hilda grumbled and then stamped her foot as she realized that she had gone in a circle.

"Maybe I missed a step when I was charging these things," Hilda muttered as she stroked her chin.

"I don't believe so," Alma said, "I double checked the spell lattice myself and it was beautiful as always."

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Hilda rolled her eyes, "my spell work aside what could it possibly be?"

"I've been doing some research and the most likely culprit would be luck aspected magic," Alma suggested.

"Wait, aren't I a luck dungeon?" I thought.

Hilda pinched the bridge of her nose, "Alma you're a brilliant apprentice and you show a tremendous amount of potential, but you need to learn that the simple solutions are the ones that are the most likely."

"Some would-be mage likely tried to teleport or open a gate and didn't close it properly," Hilda continued.

"That would explain the interference in the Ways, but doesn't explain the resistance to scrying," Alma countered.

"Several small portals then?" Hilda suggested.

"On the scale that we've seen, it would weaken the planar boundaries to the point where elementals would be coming in and out of our plane or the city would be sucked into the world between," Alma countered again.

"Well seeing as how the sky isn't raining apple juice or some sort of other ridiculousness, we can rule out primordial chaos," muttered Hilda.

"Precisely," Alma said, "luck aspected magic is the only thing that would fit all of what we've seen."

"The only issue with that is there's no way to weave luck magic into a lattice," Hilda said, "most mages have to transmute raw magic into luck aspected magic, but it dissipates too quickly to be used in spellcraft."

"What if it was naturally occurring?" Alma asked.

"Besides the fact that luck magic has never been observed to pool together like that?" Hilda asked.

Alma sighed, "that's the only problem with my theory. Everything else lines up though."

"Hmm it's got its flaws, but there might be something to your theory," Hilda said, "I'm coming back, dowsing is proving useless anyways."

“Confirmed, awaiting your arrival,” Alma said.

“Just- ugh we're going to work on your formality Alma,” Hilda groaned.

“Right, sorry,” Alma said apologetically.

And just as suddenly as she showed up, she vanished in a flash of light.

“Ah I hope that's not going to turn into a problem later,” I said to myself.

***

“Oh this is going to be a big problem,” Hilda muttered as she flipped through Alma's notes.

“Ma'a- um Hilda?” Alma asked, “is there something wrong with my notes?”

“Not at all Alma,” Hilda replied, still nose deep in the notes, “that's what the problem is.”

“Could you explain?” Alma asked.

“Your theory is sound, but there is no way this is a naturally occurring phenomenon or residual energy from a magical working,” Hilda explained.

“But what else could it be?” Alma asked.

“Luck magic heavily resists being detected, woven into a spell, or even contained in one place,” Hilda began.

“Very few people have dedicated themselves to researching this particular branch of magic because of how difficult it is to work with,” she continued.

“Is that why there’s not much literature at the library on luck magic?” Alma asked.

“Well that and hard to get funding when all you have to show for your work is one hundred more ways that luck magic can’t be detected or worked with, but that’s neither here nor there,” Hilda muttered.

“So if this is not a naturally occurring phenomenon or spell working, what could it be?” Alma asked.

“We’re dealing with a living entity that has taken up residence in the warehouse district,” Hilda declared.

“Fascinating,” Alma exclaimed as she picked up a quill and began taking notes.

“For the sake of argument, let’s assume an entity or creature exists that we’ll call a luck elemental,” Hilda began, “a luck elemental would be nearly impossible to detect, so that would explain why it’s gone undiscovered for so long.”

“Having a potentially unknown creature in the warehouse district would be a problem, but why is this potentially such a big problem?” Alma asked.

“Because the only reason we know about it in the first place is because it appeared right under our noses and began to put off enough energy to interfere with a scrying spell,” Hilda explained, “tell me Alma, what would cause a magical creature to let off that much magical energy.”

Alma’s eyes grew wide, “magical creatures let off that much energy as part of nesting behavior in order to attract a mate and drive off potential threats and competitors.”

“Exactly,” Hilda exclaimed.

“But what should we do?” Alma asked, “we can’t go to the local Slayer’s Guild and say we have a theoretical monster in the approximate area of the warehouse district.”

“Yes, quite, this brings us back to our original problem of how to detect an undetectable magical signature,” Hilda muttered.

The two of them spent a moment thinking.

Hilda sighed, “It had to be luck magic. We’d have an easier time trying to find out where it isn’t.”

Both of them stopped and stared at each other.

“Well it looks like we have a lot of work ahead of us,” Alma sighed.