The castle stood before him, a hundred feet tall, turrets towering, flags whipping in the wind, a hundred black windows gaping back at him, seemingly just as impressed with the formidable-looking palace. Sven was no stranger to castles, they littered the realm, but most of them had “modernized”, or “re-modernized”, or whatever: fancy light and water shows danced about in extravagant fountains and pools, grey walls were painted with elaborate murals and colors (He was pretty sure that the current go-to was a particularly horrendous shade of magenta.), and, of course, a staff of Magicians kept on the grounds to keep the many rooms lit, the plumbing running and the Self-Sweeping Brooms sweeping.
Divit Bhatt, the mysterious sole occupant of Castle Bhatt, save for the eight guards that he employed around the clock, had seemingly embraced the downfall of “technology”. His fortress stood, tall, dark, foreboding, and mercilessly “medieval”. Sven compulsively spun the ring on his left hand, and then the one on his right, before taking a deep breath and emerging from his place in the shadows, his footprints already filling with the wet, heavy snow, erasing any evidence that he had been there at all.
He knew exactly where he was going, his surveillance had been through and very rewarding: besides the six minute gap in guard shifts, he had also managed to snag a copy of the “Coming and Goings” schedule that hung in the guard house when on a particularly lucky day when the occupants had spent the night before (and most of the early morning) at the tavern in town, rendering them VERY unaware of their surroundings when they managed to stumble themselves home and into bed.
Today and all of tomorrow Master Bhatt was informatively marked as “Out and Not To Be Bothered”, as opposed to “At Home and Not To Be Disturbed”. Sven gathered that he was a man whom valued his privacy. After he managed to slip through the gap in guard coverage (two minutes to spare, the night was looking up) he carefully made his way to the posterior side of the fortress, gingerly making his way through the drifting snow in the way that would leave the least evidence of his visit. He was pretty sure, very sure, that no one had seen him come and if he had it his way, his exit would be just as smooth, but it was strictly against the Thief’s Code to ever be certain of anything, so he took precautions all the same, dragging a small piece of a pine switch behind him in the snow. He stopped in front of a small wooden door, perfectly inconspicuous to the untrained eye and with a final look over his shoulder for trouble, he removed the Master Key from the leather pouch on his hip.
The Master Key was a peculiar piece of equipment; it looked rather like what a swiss army knife might look like mated with a screwdriver and a combination lock. It was about the length and width of Sven’s index finger at the moment, though he was busying himself pulling and flipping it this way and that and it was rapidly expanding to the size of his forearm.You would be hard-pressed to find a stranger-looking tool, or one more helpful for his line of work. He had procured it when he had managed to get his hands onto a decent set of forged work papers and had enjoyed a short-lived stint as a locksmith’s apprentice.
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He had quite liked the work, it had been fun to be PAYED to break into things for a change, but the Council had cracked down on forgeries only a couple of months later and he had been forced back into his life of breaking into places against their owner’s wishes, but not before he managed to snag the locksmith’s very rare tool. He felt bad about that sometimes, stealing it from a man who had shown him only kindness and patience, but it was always better to feel guilt than to feel hunger (another kernel of wisdom from the Thieve’s Code).
As far as he knew, this was one of the only Master Keys not held in the realm’s vault for Unapproved or Unidentified Magical Material , or “UUMM”, and he had to admit, this was not without good reason. He had yet to meet a lock that the Master Key could not pick; he shuddered at the thought of it in the wrong hands, and then, reassessing his situation, felt a sheepish red glow creeping on his face that was definitely not from the cold. Fine, then, wrong-ER hands.
He set his sight on the very well disguised, very modern lock on the door and pressed the Master Key to it, hooking the stethoscope earpieces that had emerged from it into his ears and listening intently to the internal “tick tick tick” ing of the lock. He had felt both impressed and exhilarated when he had first noticed that this inconspicuous door had actually been outfitted with the most complex lock system on the market. He knew that this would be very much worth his while the second he had registered that lock; you didn’t drop that many Qyiri on a lock for your average, nothing to hide, definitely no treasure basement.
Sven, after his first week of surveillance, had deduced that the guards were either unaware of this door or too cocky in their assumption that no one would ever get passed their front patrol. He guessed it was probably the former, simply because that’s what he would have done: don’t tell the guards what they don’t need to know, don’t hire a snoopy, stuck-up Magician to cast any fancy Spellwork, just buy the best lock money could buy, one that had never successfully been picked, and sit back to enjoy his very safe and very secret treasure. He suspected that Divit Bhatt shared his mistrust of all other creatures.
“And with good reason” he thought to himself as he watched the numbers on the Master Key’s middle spin rapidly, around and around.
It took longer than usual for the Master Key to work its (literal) magic, which he had suspected would be the case with a lock of this caliber, but the extra minute felt like an eternity to Sven. At exactly the moment he had simultaneously become sure that both the Master Key had failed and that the guards had discovered some carelessly left bootprint and were about to come around the corner to discover him standing there, defenseless, the numbers on the Master Key finally clicked into place and the unpickable lock clicked open, the door unlatching with a reluctant groan. Sven took a deep breath, and quietly slid himself into the dark hallway that had appeared in front of him, making sure to reset the lock behind him as he flipped and folded the Master Key back down to size and slipped it back into his purse. He had absolutely no idea what was so carefully and secretly locked away here, but he was really hoping it wasn’t a dragon.